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Seltzer 

Tolstoi: 

A  Critical  Study  of 

Hin  and  i^s  Works 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


IV. 


THE  EEOITER'S  LIBRARY.     DEOEMBEE,  1901. 


No.  12. 


TOLSTOI. 


CRITICAL    STUDY 

OF 

HIM   AND    HIS 

WORKS. 


Library 
Institute  of  Industri! 
University  of  Califc 
Lqs  Angeles  24,  Califj 


Published  Monthly  at  $3.00  a  Year 
Single  Numbers,  35  Cents. 

43  and  45  E.  I9th  St., 

NEW    YORK. 


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pyriffht.  190,,  by  EDO.R  S.  WERXER  .-^UBU^mKO  &  SUPPLY  CO.    Entered  at  N.  Y.  Post-Onice  as  seco.ul-.la.s  .nail  iSTtter. 

Jt»RICE,    35    CENTS. 


1 

Harmonic  Gymnastics  and 
Pantomimic  Expression. 

Edited  by   MARION    LOWELL. 


The  most  elaborate  series  of  exercieteH  ever  publlKlied  for  tralnlns 
Cbe  body  for  all  forms  of  emotional  expression. 


-WHOEVER- 


speaks,  sings,  or  acts 
in  a  professional  way;  whoever 
wishes  to  reach  the  highest  degree  of  aes- 
thetic physical  culture,  either  for  health  or  for  art 
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perfect    manner    whatever   it   is   capable   of   expressing,    whether   in 
public  or  in  private  life,  needs  this  book,  which  is 

THE  HIGHWAY  TO  /ESTHETIC  PREEMINENCE. 
TECHNICAL  ^^^^^-^^^ 

The   exercises   minutely  described    and  ar- 
TERMS  ranged   in    progressive  order,  the  pupil  alter- 

nately standing  and  sitting. 

AVOIDED  ^^^^^^^^ 

^       Some  Idea  of  its  elaborate  nature  is  sliown  by  tbe  fact 
tliat  there  are : 

33  Gestures  for  Expressions  of  the  Hand. 
54  Attitudes  for  Impersonal  Expressions  of  the  Head. 
75  Exercises  for  Complex  Emotional  Action  in  Walking, 
81  Attitudes  for  Combined  Expressions  for  Eyebrow  and  Upper  Lid. 
99  Attitudes  for  Complex  Expressions  of  Head  with  Personal  Regard. 
405  Attitudes  for  Expressions  of  Eyebrow  and  Upper  and  Lower  Lie 
Combined. 

Besides    hundreds     of    other    Attitudes,     Gestures,    Motions, 
^      Exercises,  etc. 


Teachers'  net  price,  $2.00,  postpaid.     Address, 

Edoai  8.  Werner  Putilisliino  &  Supply  Co.,  incorporated.  43  E.  I9t!i  St.,  N.  Y. 


Rei. 


Tolstoi: 

<A  Critical  Study   of  Him   and  His    Works, 

'By    THOMAS  SELTZER. 

Copyright,    1901,  by   Edgar   S.   Werner   Publishing  &   Supply  Co.    (Incorporated). 
THE  RUSSIAN  NATION: 

The  Russian  population  is  a  heterogeneous  mass  composed  of  up- 
ward of  a  hundred  nationalities  speaking  more  than  forty  languages. 
The  predominating  element,  however,  is  Slavic  which  constitutes 
iibout  three-quarters  of  the  entire  population ;  but  besides  the  Slavs, 
who  are  a  branch  of  the  great  Aryan  family,  the  other  two  ethno- 
logical divisions  are  also  largely  represented — the  Turanian  by  the 
Mongolians  and  the  Finns,  and  the  Semitic  by  the  Jews.  The  Slavic 
population  embraces  the  Russians,  the  Lithuanians,  the  Poles,  and  a 
number  of  smaller  races.  The  Russians  proper,  who  form  about 
two-thirds  of  the  whole  number  of  inhabitants,  are  again  subdivided 
into  Great  Russians  occupying  the  northern  and  central  part  of  the 
country;  the  Little  Russians  inhabiting  the  Ukraine  which  comprises 
the  governments  of  Kiev,  Chernigov,  Poltava  and  Kharkov ;  and  the 
White  Russians  who  have  their  homes  in  Vitebsk  and  Moghilev. 
In  addition  there  remains  to  be  mentioned,  the  German  quota  of  the 
Russian  population,  located  in  the  Baltic  provinces  and  Southern 
Russia. 

THE  RUSSIAN  LANGUAGE: 

Although  many  languages  and  dialects  are  spoken  throughout  the 
empire,  the  literary  language  of  Russia,  which  is  that  of  the  pre- 
dominating Great  Russians,  is  one.  It  is  the  chief  unifying  factor 
of  the  compound  of  the  Russian  population  and  the  vehicle  of  inter- 
communication among  its  various  constituent  elements.  It  is  also, 
the  official  language  and  hence  the  language  of  the  schools. 

Russian  first  became  a  written  language  in  the  time  of  Peter  the 
Great,  till  which  period  the  old  Slavic — the  language  of  the  church 
— had  been  the  only  medium  of  literary  expression,  and  had,  in  con- 


1 1 17604 


2  TOLSTOI: 

sequence,  exercised  an  important  inlUience  on  tlie  Russian  popular 
speech,  as  on  that  of  other  Slavic  dialects.  The  Mongol  conquest, 
and  the  preponderance  of  Polish  elements  in  the  western  parts  of 
the  empire,  have  also  introduced  into  the  Russian  language  a  great 
number  of  Mongolian  and  I'olish  expressions;  in  addition  to  which, 
the  efforts  of  Peter  the  Great  to  give  his  subjects  the  benefits  of 
western  culture  have  enlarged  the  Russian  vocabulary,  especially  in 
arts  and  industry,  with  numerous  (ierman,  h~rencli  and  Dutch  words, 
llie  chief  characteristics  of  Russian  as  a  language  are  simplicity 
and  naturalness.  The  grammatical  connection  of  sentences  is  slight, 
and  the  number  of  conjunctions  scanty.  Perspicuity  and  expres- 
siveness are  obtained  by  the  freedom  allowed  in  the  placing  of  words. 
Auxiliary  verbs  and  articles  there  are  none;  while  personal  pronouns- 
may  or  may  not  be  used  along  with  verbs.  The  vocabulary  of  Rus- 
sian is  very  rich,  foreign  words  l)eing,  so  to  speak.  Russianized. 
The  capability  of  the  language  for  forming  compounds  and  deriva- 
tives is  so  great,  that  from  a  single  root  not  less  than  2,000  words 
are  sometimes  derived.  The  purest  and  most  grammatical  Russian 
is  spoken  in  the  center,  about  Moscow. 

RUSSIAN  LITERATURE  : 

Russia  has  btit  lately  entered  the  arena  of  civilization  antl  dis- 
pla}s  many  characteristics  of  what  may  be  termed  a  national  par- 
venu. Leaving  out  of  consideration  the  symptoms  displayed  in  the 
internal  national  events  of  the  country  and  in  its  social  life,  and  turn- 
ing a  rapid  glance  at  its  prominent  men  of  letters,  we  notice  that  in 
the  majority  and  most  typical  cases,  there  is  manifested  a  certain 
feverish  restlessness,  a  want  of  practical  balance.  It  is  as  though 
they  desired  to  make  up  for  loss  of  ground.  The  ideas  and  ideals 
which  the  western  nations  had  taken  centuries  to  develop  are  rapidly 
absorbed  to  some  extent,  but  ill-digested  and  soon  outgrown  and 
rejected.  Dissatisfaction  sets  in.  They  wander  forth  in  quest  of 
new  philosophies,  new  ideals  and  often  land  in  the  reaction  of  mys- 
ticism, despair,  pessimism,  and  even  indifference. 

Russian  literature,  like  all  the  great  literatures  of  Eurf»pe,  began 
with  popular  poetry.  This  poetry  is  based  partly  on  myths,  the 
kernel  of  which  is  traceable  to  the  primitive  Aryan  mythology,  and 


A    CRITICAL    STUDY.  3 

partly  deals  with  the  subjects  of  marriage,  love,  death,  feasts  and 
various  other  social  customs.  The  oldest  literature  includes  also 
a  number  of  popular  tales  in  prose. 

The  epic  poems  called  bylini  are  among  the  most  important  of 
this  early  poetry.  They  are  divided  into  cycles,  most  of  them  cen- 
tenng  about  the  mythical  national  hero.  Ilia  Muromets  Others 
liave  reference  to  legends  or  historical  events  as  recent  even  as  the 
early  part  of  the  last  century.  These  bylim  have  been  communicated 
orally  by  successive  generations  of  popular  singers  and  have  been 
subjected  to  some  changes  of  detail  in  their  contact  with  fresh  events 
and  new  conditions,  but  have,  in  the  main,  preserved  their  ancient 
character,  which  must  have  become  well  fixed  at  some  distant  period 
in  the  past. 

The  first  chronicle  extant,  the  "  Chronicle  of  Nestor,"  dates  from 
the  latter  part  of  the  eleventh  century.  This  was  followed  by  a 
number  of  other  chronicles,  by  works  on  the  lives  of  the  saints,  and 
by  the  famous  "  Tale  of  the  Troop  of  Igor,"  a  prose  epic  originating 
probably  in  the  twelfth  century. 

.1;  J^^l^""  f"^  ^  ^^^^  ''"^""''  °^  ^^^^  disastrous  Tartar  domination 
that  followed,  was  a  period  of  national  stagnation,  during  which 
Russian  literature  almost  disappeared.  It  gradually  revived  with 
the  overthrow  of  the  foreign  yoke,  but  up  to  the  reign  of  Peter 
remained  devoid  of  any  remarkable  achievements.  The  culture  it 
spread,  however,  prepared  the  way  for  the  reception  of  the  more 
advanced  civilization  of  the  West  when  Peter  extended  it  his  wel- 
come In  1564,  the  first  printing-press  was  established  in  Moscow 
and  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  and  the  Epistles  of  Paul  were  printed' 
Polish  attempts  to  convert  the  Russians  to  Roman  Catholicism,  and 
especially  the  zeal  of  the  Jesuits,  led  to  the  foundation  of  Russian 
schools,  where  the  Russian  language  was  taught  and  such  other 
studies  promoted  as  would  enable  the  defenders  of  the  Greek  church 
effectually  to  meet  their  opponents  in  religious  controversy 

Peter  the  Great  found  it  helpful  for  his  reforms  to  ad'vance  the 
cause  of  literature,  and  he  himself  occasinnallv  contributed  to  the 
St.  Petersburg  Ga,ette,  the  first  Russian  newspaper,  foun<led  under 
his  auspices  in  1703^  With  his  reign  begins  a  new  era  for  Russia. 
Under  him  flourished  the  first  Russian  authors  whose  incipient  at- 


4  TOLSTOI: 

tempts  developed  in  organic  continuity  into  the  imposing  structure 
of  the  Russian  Hterature  of  to-day. 

Prince  Antiokh  Kantemir  (1708-44)  wrote  satires  in  the  style  of 
Boileau,  which  were  translated  into  French.  Vasili  Tatishchev 
(1685-1750)  was  the  authbr  of  the  first  history  of  Russia.  With 
Trediakovski  (1703-69),  a  voluminous  translator,  began  that  activity 
in  the  rendering  of  foreign  classics  to  which  almost  every  great 
Russian  author  since  then  has  contributed  his  quota;  so  that  now 
Russian  literature  stands  uncqualed  for  the  (juality  of  its  reproduc- 
tions of  the  literary  treasures  of  every  land.  The  most  important 
figure  of  that  period,  however,  is  Lomonosov  (171 1-65).  He  wrote 
a. Russian  grammar,  laid  down  literary  laws  which  he  also  taught  by 
example  in  his  own  diverse  writings,  and  introduced  a  new  system 
of  versification  more  suitable  to  the  genius  of  the  language. 

The  period  that  followed,  although  devoid  of  any  original  pro- 
ductions— French  influence  and  taste  then  holding  sway  in  Russia 
as  throughout  the  rest  of  Europe — is  nevertheless  not  without  im- 
portance. Under  Catherine  II.  (1762-96),  who  was  a  patron  of  art 
and  literature,  flourished  Kniazhnin  (1742-91),  author  of  a  number 
of  cumbrous  tragedies  written  in  Alexandrine  verse;  several  other 
tragedians  of  the  same  type;  von  Vizin  (1744-92)  whose  comedies, 
"  Nedorosl  "  ("  The  Minor  ")  and  "  Brigadier,"  possess  real  literary 
excellence ;  and  Kniazhnin  and  Kapnist  who  wrote  comedies  with 
almost  equal  success.  Catharine  11.  herself  tried  her  hand  at  a 
number  of  light  plays  which  are  said  to  be  not  bad.  Khenmitzer 
and  Dmitriev  were  the  two  prominent  fabulists  of  the  time,  while 
Bogdanovich  (1743-1803)  distinguished  himself  by  his  poem  "  Du- 
shenka."  But  the  greatest  lyric  poet  was  Derzhavin  (1743-1816) 
who  ranks  with  the  great  European  writers  of  the  age.  He  is  best 
known  by  his  stately  odes  of  which  the  "  Ode  to  God  "  was  translated 
into  many  languages,  even  including  Chinese  and  Japanese.  Of  the 
prose  writers,  the  best  are  Novikov  (1744-1818)  and  Radishchchev 
(1749-1802),  wlio  ])nl)lishcd  the  "  Jf^nrnev  from  St.  Petersburg  to 
Moscow." 

The  last  years  of  Catherine's  reign  were  marked  by  a  reaction 
against  everything  liberal,  and  the  literature  of  the  country  suflFered 
a  depression  from  which  it  began  to  recover  only  after  the  fall  of 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  '> 

Napoleon.  Karanizin  (1766-1826)  was  the  most  eminent  literary 
ligure  of  the  time.  He  reformed  the  literary  style,  clearing  it  of  its 
ancient  forms,  heavy  modes  of  expression  and  foreign  interpola- 
tions. He  also  offered  models  for  others  to  follow  by  his  numerous 
and  various  productions.  His  most  famous  Avorks  are  his  "  History 
of  Russia,"  "  Letters  of  a  Traveler "  and  the  sentimental  novel. 
"  Bednaia  Louisa  "  ("  Poor  Louisa  ").  The  Vestnik  Evropy  {Mes- 
senger of  Europe)  founded  by  him  is  still  one  of  the  best  magazines 
of  the  country.  To  the  same  period  belongs  the  dramatist  Ozerov, 
whose  tragedies,  though  on  the  whole  following  the  classical  models, 
already  bear  evidence  of  the  incoming  romantic  spirit. 

With  the  works  of  Zhukovski  (1783-1852),  and  his  translations 
of  some  of  the  poems  of  Schiller,  Wieland  and  Byron,  began  the 
romantic  movement  which  entered  Russia  at  about  the  same  time  as 
the  other  countries  of  Europe.  Alexander  Pushkin  (1799-1838), 
called  the  Father  of  Russian  poetry,  became  the  foremost  exponent 
of  the  new  school.  He  early  came  under  the  influence  of  Byron 
and  all  that  it  stood  for — life-weariness,  satiety  and  hatred  of  all 
conventional  restraint.  These  Byronic  elements  are  the  constantly 
recurring  notes  in  his  lyric  poems  of  that  period  and  particularly  in 
the  four  epic  compositions :  "  The  Prisoner  of  the  Caucasus " 
(1821)  ;  "  The  Fountain  of  Bakhchisarai"  (1822)  ;  "  The  Brother- 
Robbers  "  (1822);  and  "The  Gipsies"  (1824),  of  which  the  first 
mentioned  poem  strongly  recalls  Byron's  "  Childe  Harold."  He 
later  succeeded  in  throwing  off  the  shackles  of  Byronism  and  ap- 
proached more  and  more  the  methods  of  Shakespeare  and  Goethe. 
"  Evgeni  Oniegin,"  the  most  widely  read  of  Pushkin's  poems,  is  a 
novel  in  verse,  written  between  the  years  1823  and  1831.  It  falls 
therefore  distinctly  under  the  influence  of  Byron,  especially  of  his 
"  Childe  Harold  "  and  "  Don  Juan  " ;  Oniegin  is  a  hero  quite  after 
the  heart  of  Byron.  Among  the  other  works  of  Pushkin  are  "  Boris 
Godunov  "  (1831),  a  drama;  "Poltava"  (1828),  an  epic;  and  a 
number  of  prose  tales.  Until  the  advent  of  the  realistic  school  Push- 
kin has  been  considered  the  greatest  Russian  poet.  His  style,  both 
in  prose  and  poetry,  approaches  perfection  and  his  verse  is  distin- 
guished by  its  easy,  graceful  and  rapid  fluency.  Among  the  other 
writers  of  the  period  are  Griboiedov,  who  produced  a  comedy  of  the 


6  TOLSTOI: 

very  first  rank  in  "  Gore  ot  Uma  "  ("  Trouble  from  Cleverness  ")  ; 
the  poets  Ryleev  and  Odoievski ;  the  critic  and  story  writer,  Bestuz- 
hev ;  and  the  poets  Delvig,  Jazykov  and  Gncdich. 

The  greatest  follower  of,  antl  the  greatest  poet  next  to,  Pushkin 
is  Lennontov  (1814-1841).  His  works  are  steeped  in  the  mockery, 
the  sneers  and  the  abandonment  of  Byronism,  but  he  wrote  more 
subjectively  than  Pushkin.  Permontov  was  truly  a  Byronic  spirit. 
He  was  sincere  in  his  contempt  of  the  world's  ways  and  his  revolt 
was  real.  Hence  he  rarely  strikes  a  false  note.  His  best  works  are 
his  short  lyrics,  "  Altziri  "  ("  The  Novice  "),  "  The  Demon  "  "  Iz- 
mael  Vey,"  "  Valerin,"  and  his  prose  tale  "  Geroi  Nashego  Vremeni  " 
('"A  Hero  of  Our  Times  "). 

The  most  energetically  polemic  writer  of  the  romantic  school  was 
N.  Polevoi  (1796-1846),  and  its  great  critic  was  Belinski  (1810-48), 
sometimes  called  the  Russian  Lessing.  At  the  same  time  flourished 
the  world-renowned  fable  writer  Krylov  (1768-1844),  and  the  peas- 
ant poet  Koltzov  (1809-42),  who,  although  a  contemporary  of,  had 
no  affiliation  with,  the  romantic  movement. 

With  the  works  of  the  first  great  Russian  novelist  begins  the 
realistic  literature  of  Russia.  This  will  appear  only  natural  when 
it  is  remembered  that  sentimentalism  or  feigned  emotion  is  utterly 
foreign  to  the  Russian  nature.  Hence  a  master  spirit  like  Gogol's 
could  not  but  discover  the  incongruity  of  laying  the  foundation  of  a 
national  literature  on  elements  borrowed  from  peoples  whose  history, 
traditions  and  environment  diflFered  so  widely  from  the  Russian  and 
produced  racial  characteristics  at  variance  with,  and  often  directly 
opposed  to,  those  of  the  Russian  Slavs. 

The  literature  of  this  last  period  is  so  rich  in  great  names  that 
it  will  be  possible  to  enumerate  only  the  most  prominent  among  them. 
Nikolai  Gogol  ( 1809- 1852)  has  produced  masterpieces  of  the  highest 
order  in  his  comedy  "  The  Revisor  ",  in  some  of  his  shorter  stories, 
as  "  Taras  Bulba ",  and  in  the  long  ncnel,  "  Mertvyia  Dushi  " 
("Dead  Souls").  He  was  followed  by  Turgenev  (1818-1883), 
Dostoievski  (1822-1887)  and  Leo  Tolstoi,  each  great  in  his  own  and 
original  manner,  but  the  last  towering  high  above  them  not  only  by 
his  art  but  by  his  life.  Goncharov,  author  of  "  Oblomov,"  Garshin. 
Potapenko,  Chekhov  and  the  genial  dreamy  Korolenko  are  among 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  7 

the  minor  fiction  writers ;  while  the  youthful  Gorki  is  fast  acquiring 
international  celebrity  and  taking  rank  with  the  most  illustrious 
names  of  modern  literature. 

Of  the  poets  of  the  period,  the  greatest  is  Nekrasov  (1822-77), 
whose  works  are  a  plea  for  the  poor  and  oppressed.  He  was  followed 
by  Polonski,  Nikitin,  Nadson,  Konstantin  Konstantinovich  and  a 
host  of  others.  Aleksei  Tolstoi  produced  an  excellent  trilogy  on 
the  "  Death  of  Ivan  the  Terrible,"  and  Ostrovski  is  the  chief  and 
most  prolific  author  of  the  popular  drama.  Pisarev  is  the  great  critic 
of  the  realistic  school ;  Soltykov  as  a  satirist  is  equaled  by  few  writers 
of  the  nineteenth  century  ;  w^hile  Hertzen  and  Chernyshevski,  authors 
respectively  of  the  novels  "  Kto  Vinovat?  "  ("  Whose  Fault?  ")  and 
"  Shto  Delat?  "  ("  What  is  to  be  Done?  "),  have  struck  deep  root 
in  the  liberal  thought  of  Russia  by  the  spread  of  their  nihilistic 
teachings. 

TOLSTOI'S  RANK  AND  PLACE: 

Tolstoi  stands  out  as  the  most  gigantic  personality  in  the  world's 
literature  of  the  age.  He  has  been  compared  to  a  mighty  oak  tower- 
ing high  and  solitary  above  his  fellows  in  the  field  of  literature. 
He  is  the  greatest  of  contemporary  novelists ;  Europe  does  not  con- 
tain his  equal.  There  is  no  other  modern  novelist  (except  Dostoiev- 
ski)  who  like  Tolstoi  reveals  to  us  the  secret  channels  of  human 
thought  and  feeling,  the  most  hidden  mainsprings  of  human  action ; 
who  like  him  represents  the  individual  and  social  life-process  in  all 
its  phases;  who  is  equally  at  home  in  all  the  spheres  of  modern  life 
(which  can  not  be  said  of  Dostoevski)  ;  who  never  seeks  for  an 
ideal  or  heroic  motive  unless  it  offers  of  itself,  whether  he  takes  as 
his  subject  the  misery  of  everyday  life  or  some  significant  moment 
in  social  or  political  history.  The  best  testimony  for  Tolstoi  is  that 
his  works  are  not  printed  books  but  life  itself.  Yet  this  great  author, 
the  greatest  interpreter  of  nineteenth  century  life,  is  nevertheless 
essentially  a  Russian.  His  works  deal  almost  exclusively  with  Russia 
and  the  Russians,  and  when  foreigners  are  even  indirectly  engaged 
in  them,  he  evinces  a  national  prejudice,  as  witness  the  treatment  of 
Napoleon  in  "  War  and  Peace."  His  Russian  figures  are  moreover 
characteristically  Russian,  w'ith  all  the  traits  and  peculiarities  inci- 


»  TOLSTOI: 

dental  lo  special  oiiviruninciit.  That  llicy  none  the  less  appeal  im- 
mediately to  the  whole  world,  is  due  to  the  completeness  and  thor- 
oughness with  which  he  draws  his  characters  in  every  relation  to  life, 
thus  bringing  out  prominently  what  is  universal  and  true  of  the  whole 
of  modern  humanity.  In  typifying  the  life  of  all  classes  of  modern 
Russia,  he  paints  a  picture  of  the  collective  civilized  world  of  the 
present  in  its  most  fundamental  manifestations. 

It  is  impossible  thus  far  to  know  with  certainty  what  the  verdict 
of  the  future  will  be  as  regards  the  relative  importance  of  Tolstoi 
the  artist,  and  Tolstoi  tlie  ethical  teacher  and  man.  While  scarcely 
any  one  denies  the  permanent  quality  of  his  artistic  work,  there  are 
many  predictions,  some  of  them  very  positive  and  dogmatic,  that  his 
teaching  will  soon  be  forgotten  ;  but  there  are  some  who  lay  particular 
emphasis  on  his  work  as  a  devotee.  It  is  safe  to  predict  that  he  will 
long  be  studied,  if  not  for  the  strength  and  beauty  of  his  great  art, 
at  least  for  the  challenge  flung  at  modernity  b}-  his  creed  and  his 
spirit,  which  makes  his  life-work  of  greater  significance  to  humanity 
than  that  of  any  of  tlie  great  European  artists  since  Byron's  day. 

TOLSTOI'S   PHILOSOPHY.* 
QBNERAL  PRINCIPLES  : 

Tolstoi  bases  his  philosophy  on  loz'e  as  the  first  principle,  from 
which  he  deduces  the  corollary :  "  Resist  not  evil  " ;  that  is  to  say, 
donot_o£pose  violence  \Yith  violence.  Hence,  Tolstoi  regards  him- 
self as  a  follower  of  the  Christian  teaching.  Tolstoi's  Christianity, 
however,  is  purely  fh-^  rlrtrtrinp  qj  r^T'*:^  It  repudiates  every  es- 
tablished church,  whether  Greek,  Catholic  or  Protestant.  The 
churches,  he  declares,  have  nothing  in  common  with  the  Christian 
teaching  save  the  name.  They  are  founded  on  anti-Christian  prin- 
ciples and  are  hostile  to  Christianity.  The  church  is  presumption, 
violence,  self-assertion,  rigidity  and  death.  Christianity  is  meek- 
ness, repentance,  submissiveness,  progress  and  hfc.  The  church 
having  once  given  way  to  the  world,  followed  it  ever  after.  The 
world  organized  its  existence  in  direct  opposition  to  the  doctrine  of 
Christ,  and  the  church  invented  metaphors  according  to  which  it  ap- 

•  A  systematic  exposition  of  Tolstoi's  philosophy  as  gathered  from  his  various 
religious  and  philosophical  works.  To  secure  accuracy,  his  own  language  has  been 
letained  as   far  as  possible  in   this  as  well  as   in  the   sketch   of  Tolstoi's  theory  on   art 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  9 

peared  that  men  who  really  lived  contrary  to  the  law  of  Christ  lived 
in  accordance  with  it.  And  the  world  began  to  lead  a  life  which 
rapidly  grew  worse  than  that  of  the  pagans,  and  the  church  began 
to  justify  this  way  of  living,  and  to  affirm  that  it  was  strictly  in 
accordance  with  the  doctrine  of  Christ. 

Tolstoi  does  not  believe  in  supernatural  revelation,  nor  in  the 
superhumanity  of  Christ.  Indeed,  he  rejects  all  dogmas  whatso- 
ever. By  God,  he  understands  the  spirit  dwelling  in  man,  ihat- 
spiri^ which  every  one  recognizes  within  him  and  which  he  is  con;;;^ 
scious  of  as  being^Jree,  rational,  and  independent  of  the  flesh.  In 
this  sense  it  was  that  Christ  called  himself  the  son  of  God,  just  as 
every  man  is  the  son  of  God,  according  to  the  spirit.  All  the  miracu- 
lous tales  concerning  his  birth  and  resurrection,  Tolstoi  declares  to 
be  utterly  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  Christ's  doctrine,  and  the  invention 
of  a  coarse  conception. 

Cleared  of  their  supernatural  encumbrances,  the  teachings  of 
Christ  find  their  justification  on  grounds  of  pure  reason.  The  belief 
in  Christ  is  not  a  belief  in  the  personality  of  Christ,  but  a  recognition 
of  the  truth.     Rp;\,'^on  is  thp  law  recognized  by  man,  accordingto 


which  he  must  work  out  his  life.  Since,  however,  there  is  no  higher 
reason  outside  of  oneself,  one's  own  reason  must  become  the  highest 
and  sole  guide  in  the  conduct  of  life"  And  the  more  one's  life  is  con- 
ducted according  to  the  dictates  of  reason,  the  more  it  is  subor- 
dinated to  mere  animal  existence,  the  better  will  that  life  be. 

Formerly,  beliefs  were  imposed  on  men.  They  were  not  the 
products  of  reason.  When,  through  increased  intercourse,  people 
learned  to  know  other  religions,  and  were  led  to  reflect  as  to  which, 
was  the  true  one,  it  was  reason  alone  that  could  decide  for  them. 
It  is  by  reason  and  not  bv  faith  thrlt  "^^^  attain  tn  a  recognition  of 
the  truth.  The  law  of  truth  reveals  itself  to  man  gradually.  It  has 
revealed  itselt  lor  the  first  time  in  the  midst  of  a  heathen  world,  to 
a  man  said  to  be  Christ.  The  teaching  of  Christ  is  reason  itself.  It 
contains  the  only  rules  of  life  whereby  it  is  possible  to  live  according 
to  reason,  and  hence  no  one  resting  himself  on  reason,  has  the  right 
to  renounce  it. 

The  love  declared  by  Christ  as  the  highest  principle  is  not  what 
people  usually  comprehencl  under  that  name.     To  men  who  do  not 


.Vr- 


v-n 


10  TOLSTOI: 

understand  life,  love  is  merely  that  which  contributes  to  their  own 
well-being.  Their  love  for  wife,  children,  friends,  is  only  another 
form  jiLself-love.  But  true  love  is  a  constant  denial  of  seTFfor  the 
sake  of  another ;  it  is  a  condition  of  "^ood-will  toward  all — a  condi- 


tion natural  in  children,  but  which  in  adults  can  be  brought  about 
only  by  means  of  se!f-reniuiciation  ;  it  is  an  ideal  of  complete,  endless 
and  divine  perfection.  And  in  the  nearest  appn^ach  to  this  divine 
perfection  of  which  every  man  is  conscious  within  himself,  but 
which  can  be  reached  only  in  endlessness,  consists  the  true  life 
according  to  the  teaching  of  Christ,  instead  of.  as  was  formerly 
believed,  in  the  fulfilment  of  commandments,  in  the  fulfilment  of  the 
la\v.  Since,  moreover,  love,  according  to  Christ,  is  the  highest  law, 
and  the  teachings  of  Christ  are  founded  on  reason,  love  must  also  be 
based  on  reason.  Love  is  the  only  reasonable  activity  of  man  and  is 
that  which  solves  all  the  contradict-ions  of  human  life.  It  gives  to  life 
that  which,  in  view  of  the  fact  of  death,  would  be  meaningless,  a 
meaning  independent  of  time  and  space. 

Tolstoi  believes  that  there  are  three  and  only  three  views  of 
life:  Plrst,  embracing  tlie  individual,  or  the  animal  view  of  life; 
second,  embracing  the  society  or  the  pagan  view  of  life ;  third,  em- 
bracing the  whole  w-orld,  or  the  divine  view  of  life.  In  the  first 
theory  of  life,  a  man's  life  is  limited  to  his  own  individuality;  the 
aim  of  life  is  the  satisfaction  of  the  will  of  this  individuality.  In 
the  second  theory,  a  man's  life  is  limited  not  to  his  own  individuality, 
but  to  certain  societies  and  classes  of  individuals:  to  the  tribe,  the 
family,  the  clan,  the  nation ;  the  aim  of  life  is  limited  to  the  satis- 
faction of  the  will  of  those  associations  of  individuals.  In  the  third 
theory  a  man's  life  is  limited  not  to  societies  and  classes  of  individuals, 
but  extends  to  the  principle  and  source  of  life — to  God.  The  motor 
power  of  his  life  is  love.  And  his  religion  is  the  w^orship  in  deed 
and  in  truth  of  the  principle  of  the  whole — God. 

From  the  law  of  love  follows  necessarily  the  principle  of  non- 
resistance  to  evil.  "  Resist  not  evil  "  means  never  resist  evil ;  that  is, 
never  ofYer  violence  to  any  one,  never  do  anything  which_js_QpjQOsecl 
to  love.  The  precept,  not  to  resist  evil,  is  one  which  contains  the 
whole  substance  of  Christ's  doctrine,  if  we  consider  it  not  only  as 
a  saying  but  as  a  law  we  are  bound  to  obey.     It  is  like  a  latch-key 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  11 

which  will  open  any  door,  but  only  if  it  be  well  inserted  into  the 
lock.  The  law  of  love  inevitably  leads  to  the  principle  of  non- 
resistance  since  it  is  impossible  to  find  a  sure,  incontestable  criterion 
for  evil.  What  is  evil  to  one  may  appear  good  to  another.  People 
invested  with  sanctity  considered  that  as  an  evil  which  to  men 
and  institutions  invested  with  secular  power  appeared  good,  so  t^iat 
now  men  have  arrived  at  the  full  recognition  of  the  fact  that  an 
outward,  universally  binding  definition  of  evil  does  not  and  can  not 
exist. 

Non-resistance  to  evil,  however,  does  not,  according  to  Tolstoi, 
signify  every  form  of  resistance.  Tolstoi  intends  to  designate  by 
the  precept  only  resistance  by  force.  In  this  sense,  however,  the 
principle  is  made  applicable  in  its  widest  scope.  We  must  not  only 
not  resist  evil  done  to  ourselves,  but  also  that  committed  against  our 
neighbor.  In  support  of  this  Tolstoi  quotes  the  words  of  Jesus 
addressed  to  Peter  when  the  latter  in  Christ's  defense  struck  the 
servant  of  the  high  priest  with  the  sword :  "  All  they  that  take  the 
sword  shall  perish  with  the  sword."  Nor  is  the  commandment 
applicable  only  to  some,  but  binding  on  all.  It  forbids  the  use  of 
violence  by  those  who  are  in  possession  of  power,  as  well  as  by  those 
who  are  not. 

The  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  Tolstoi  declares,  contains  five  pre- 
cepts all  of  which  form  but  one  of  the  steps  in  the  approach  to 
perfection.  They  are  negative  in  character  and  therefore  can  be 
followed  even  at  the  present  stage  of  man's  life  by  all  who  strive 
after  perfection.  The  first  of  this  is :  "  Hold  thy  peace  with  every- 
one, and  when  peace  is  disturbed  use  all  efiforts  to  restore  it ;  "  the 
second :  "  Let  every  man  take  but  one  woman  and  every  woman  but 
one  man,  and  let  none  abandon  the  other  under  any  pretext ;  "  the 
third :  "  Make  no  vows ;  "  the  fourth,  the  most  important  of  all, 
embodying  the  non-resistance  principle :  "  Suffer  vexation,  do  not 
repay  evil  with  evil ;  "  and  the  fifth :  "  Do  not  break  the  peace  in 
order  to  serve  your  interests." 

SPECIAL  APPLICATIONS,     (a)  LAW. 

On  the  principle  of  non-resistance  to  evil  Tolstoi  rejects  all 
law.     Law  is  maintained  by  violence  and  hence  it  is  impossible  to 


12  TOLSTOI: 

admit  the  Godhead  of  Christ,  the  basis  of  whose  teaching  is  non- 
resistance  to  evil,  and  at  the  same  time  to  work  consciously  and  un- 
concernedly for  the  institutions  of  property,  courts  of  law,  king- 
doms, the  army  and  so  on.  There  may  have  been  a  time  when  the 
violence  of  law  was  milder  than  the  violence  of  individuals.  Such, 
liQwevcr,  is  no  longer  the  case  among  the  most  highly  developed- 
peoples.  Our  dispositions  have  grown  gentler.  Men,  nowadays, 
recognize  the  precept  of  love  of  the  humankind,  of  pity  for  one's 
neighbor,  and  only  desire  the  possibility  of  quiet,  peaceful  living. 
At  any  rate  it  would  be  much  more  simple  to  regulate  our  lives 
according  to  the  doctrine  of  Christ ;  and  then,  if  courts  of  law,  execu- 
tions and  war  were  found  indispensable  to  our  welfare,  we  might  pray 
to  have  them  too. 

P'ormerly  people  believed  in  the  supernatural  origin  of  laws,  and 
therefore  could  readily  submit  to  them.  From  the  very  commence- 
ment of  Christianity,  however,  it  began  to  be  understood  that  human 
laws,  though  given  out  for  divine  laws,  were  compiled  by  men,  and 
can  not  be  infallible,  whatever  the  external  majesty  with  which  they 
are  invested,  and  that  erring  men  are  not  rendered  infallible  by 
assembling  together  and  calling  themselves  a  senate  or  any  other 
name.  Indeed,  Christ  himself  directly  repudiates  law  with  the 
words:  "  Judge  not  and  ye  shall  not  be  judged"  (Matt.  vii.  i)  ; 
"Condemn  not  and  ye  shall  not  be  condemned "  (Luke  vi.  37), 
which  mean  that  we  are  not  only  never  to  condemn  our  brother  in 
word,  that  is  by  speaking  evil  of  him,  but  that  we  must  not  institute 
courts  of  law  for  the  condemnation  of  a  fellow  creature  to  punish- 
ment. Tolstoi  said  that  the  first  point  that  struck  him  when  he 
understood  the  commandment,  "  Resist  not  evil,"  in  its  true  mean- 
ing, was  that  human  courts  were  not  only  contrary  to  this  command- 
ment, but  in  direct  opposition  to  the  whole  doctrine  of  Christ,  and 
that  therefore  he  must  certainly  have  forbidden  them.  Christ  says, 
"  Resist  not  evil."  The  sole  object  of  courts  of  law  is  to  resist  evil. 
Christ  enjoins  us  to  return  good  for  evil.  Courts  of  law  return 
evil  for  evil.  In  his  prayer  Christ  enjoins  all  men.  without  any  ex- 
ception, to  forgive  as  they  hope  fo  be  forgiven.  Then  how  can  a 
man  judge  and  condemn  another  when,  according  to  the  faith  he 
]irofosses,  he  is  briimd  to  forgive? 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  V-\ 

Another  point  he  makes  against  the  institution  of  law  is  that  vio- 
lence under  the  fixed  form  of  law  condemns  only  that  which  public 
opinion  has  for  the  most  part  long  ago  disavowed  and  condemned ; 
and  that  while  public  opinion  censures  all  the  acts  opposed  to  the 
moral  law,  the  law  which  rests  on  violence  condemns  and  punishes 
only  a  certain  very  limited  range  of  acts,  and  by  so  doing  seems 
to  justify  all  other  acts  of  the  same  kind  which  do  not  come  under 
its  scope.  Public  opinion  ever  since  the  time  of  Moses  has  regarded 
covetousness,  profligacy  and  cruelty  as  wrong,  and  censured  them 
accordingly.  And  it  condemns  every  kind  of  manfestation  of  covet- 
ousness, not  only  the  appropriation  of  the  property  of  others  by  force 
or  fraud  or  trickery,  but  even  the  cruel  abuse  of  wealth ;  it  condemns 
every  form  of  profligacy  whether  with  concubine,  slave,  divorced 
woman,  or  even  one's  own  wife ;  it  condemns  every  kind  of  cruelty, 
whether  shown  in  blows,  in  ill-treatment,  or  in  murder,  not  only  of 
men  but  even  of  animals.  The  law  resting  on  force  punishes  only 
certain  forms  of  covetousness,  such  as  robbery  and  swindling,  cer- 
tain forms  of  profligacy  and  cruelty,  such  as  conjugal  infidelity, 
murder,  and  wounding.  And  in  this  way  it  seems  to  countenance 
all  the  manifestations  of  covetousness,  profligacy,  and  cruelty,  which 
do  not  come  under  its  narrow  definition. 

Love  alone  must  govern  the  conduct  of  men.  But  to  follow  the 
precept  of  love  is  to  accept  the  gospel  of  Christ  as  the  guide  of  life, 
and  were  all  to  fulfil  Christ's  doctrine,  the  kingdom  of  God  would 
be  on  earth.  If  only  each  one  were  to  begin  to  do  what  we  must  do, 
and  cease  to  do  what  we  may  not  do,  then  the  near  future  would 
bring  the  promised  kingdom  of  Heaven,  for  the  kingdom  of  God 
is  not  in  the  world  without,  but  in  the  soul  of  manj  The  kingdom 
of  God  is  but  the  following  of  the  commandments  of  Christ,  espe- 
cially the  five  commandments  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 

The  follower  of  Christ  will  be  poor,  Tolstoi  believes,  but  he  will 
enjoy  the  blessings  given  him  by  God.  We  have  come  to  consider 
the  word  poverty  as  expressive  of  misery,  yet  it  really  is  happiness. 
"  He  is  poor  "  means  that  he  does  not  live  in  a  town,  but  in  the 
country ;  he  does  not  sit  idly  at  home,  but  labors  in  the  fields  or 
the  woods ;  he  sees  the  sunshine,  the  sky,  beasts,  and  birds ;  he  need 
not  take  thought  what  he  shall  do  to  excite  his  appetite,  to  facilitate 


14  TOLSTOI: 

his  digestion;  but  he  feels  hungry  three  times  a  day.  He  does  not 
toss  about  on  his  soft  pillow,  thinking  how  to  cure  himself  of  sleep- 
lessness, but  sleeps  soundly  after  his  work.  He  sees  his  children 
around  him,  he  lives  in  friendly  communion  with  men.  The  main 
point  is  that  he  is  not  obliged  to  do  work  which  he  hates,  and  he 
need  not  fear  the  future.  He  will  be  ill,  suffer,  die  as  others  do  (and 
judging  by  the  way  the  poor  suffer  and  die,  his  death  will  be  an 
easier  one  than  that  of  the  rich)  ;  but  he  will  doubtlessly  have  led  a 
better  life.  We  must  be  poor,  we  must  be  beggars,  wanderers  on 
the  face  of  the  earth;  that  is  wliat  Christ  taught  us,  and  without  it 
we  can  not  enter  the  kingdom  of  God. 

(b)  aOVERNMBNT. 

Because  Tolstoi  believes  that  Christianity  is  opposed  to  law,  he 
necessarily  believes  also  that  it  puts  an  end  to  government  which  is 
based  on  law.  No  honest  and  serious-minded  man  of  our  day  can 
help  seeing  the  incompatibility  of  true  Christianity — the  doctrine  of 
meekness,  forgiveness  of  injuries  and  love — with  government,  its 
pomposity,  acts  of  violence,  executions,  and  wars.  The  profession 
of  true  Christianity  not  only  excludes  the  possibility  of  recognizing 
government,  but  even  destroys  its  very  foundations.  The  state  con- 
ception of  life  could  be  justified  only  so  long  as  all  men  voluntarily 
sacrificed  their  personal  interests  to  the  public  welfare.  But  so  soon 
as  there  were  individuals  who  would  not  voluntarily  sacrifice  their 
own  interests,  and  authority,  that  is,  violence  was  needed  to  restrain 
them,  then  the  disintegrating  principle  of  the  coercion  of  one  set 
of  people  by  another  set  entered  into  the  social  conception  of  the 
organization  based  on  it. 

It  matters  little  what  the  form  of  government  may  be,  he  de- 
clares. The  only  difference  is  that  under  a  despotic  form  of  gov- 
ernment, the  authority  is  concentrated  in  a  small  number  of  oppress- 
ors and  violence  takes  a  crude  form ;  under  constitutional  monarch- 
ies and  republics,  as  in  France  and  America,  authority  is  divided 
among  a  great  number  of  oppressors  and  the  forms  assumed  by 
violence  are  less  crude. 

Even  if  there  was  once  a  time  when,  owing  to  the  low  standard 
of  morals,  and  the  disposition  of  men  to  violence,  the  existence  of 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  15 

an  authority  to  restrain  such  violence,  was  an  advantage,  because 
the  violence  of  government  was  less  than  the  violence  of  individuals, 
one  can  not  but  see  that  this  advantage  could  not  be  lasting.  As 
the  disposition  of  individuals  to  violence  diminished,  as  the  habits  of 
the  people  became  more  civilized,  and  as  power  grew  more  demo-, 
ralized  through  lack  of  restraint,  this  advantage  disappeared.  Men 
of  the  present  day  hate  oppression,  inequality,  class  distinction,  and 
every  kind  of  cruelty  to  animals,  as  well  as  to  human  beings.  It 
may  well  be  that  there  are  people  who  can  not  help  regarding  all  this 
(government  administration)  as  necessary  and  indispensable.  He 
does  not  dispute  the  question  with  them,  he  speaks  for  himself  only ; 
but  says  with  absolute  certainty  that  he  does  not  need  it,  and  that 
he  can  not  follow  the  conduct  which  it  prescribes. 

Government  is  the  rule  of  the  wicked  over  the  good.  The  whole 
history  of  pagan  time  is  nothing  but  the  narration  of  the  manner 
and  means  by  which  the  more  wicked  gained  possession  of  power 
over  the  less  wicked,  and  retained  it  by  cruelties  and  deceptions, 
ruling  over  the  good  under  pretense  of  guarding  their  rights  and 
protecting  them  from  the  wicked.  All  the  revolutions  in  history  arc 
only  examples  of  the  more  wicked  seizing  power  and  oppressing  the 
good.  The  wicked  will  always  dominate  the  good,  and  will  always 
oppress  them.  The  governments  of  our  day- — all  of  them,  the  most 
despotic  and  liberal  alike — have  become  what  Hertzen  so  well  called 
"  Ghenghis  Khan  with  the  telegraph,"  that  is  to  say,  organizations 
of  violence  based  on  no  principle  but  the  grossest  tyranny,  and  at 
the  same  time  taking  advantage  of  all  the  means  invented  by  science 
for  the  peaceful  collective  social  activity  of  free  and  equal  men,  used 
by  them  to  enslave  and  oppress  their  fellows. 

It  is  said  by  those  who  defend  the  existing  order  of  things  that 
the  suppression  of  government  violence  can  be  possible  and  desirable 
only  when  all  men  have  become  Christians.  So  long  as  among 
people  nominally  Christians  there  are  un-Christian  wncked  men,  who 
for  the  gratification  of  their  own  lusts  are  ready  to  do  harm  to  others, 
the  suppression  of  government  authority,  far  from  being  a  blessing  to 
others,  would  only  increase  their  miseries.  But  in  saying  that  ex- 
cept for  the  government  the  bad  would  oppress  the  good,  the  cham- 
pions of  the  existing  order  of  things  take  it  for  granted  that  the 


18  TOLSTOI: 

good  are  those  who  at  the  present  time  are  in  possession  of  power 
and  the  bad  are  those  who  are  in  subjection  to  it.  This  would  be 
true  if  the  custom  of  our  society  were  what  is,  or  rather  is  supposed 
to  be,  the  custom  in  China;  that  is,  that  the  good  always  rule,  and 
that  directly  those  at  the  head  of  government  cease  to  be  better  than 
those  they  rule  over,  the  citizens  are  bound  to  remove  them.  This 
is  supposed  to  be  the  custom  in  China.  In  reality  it  is  not  so  and  can , 
never  be  so.  For  to  remove  the  heads  of  a  government  ruling  by 
force,  it  is  not  the  right  alone,  but  the  power  to  do  so  that  is  needed. 
So  that  even  in  China  this  is  only  an  imaginary  custom.  And  in  our 
Christian  world  we  do  not  even  suppose  such  a  custom,  and  we  have 
nothing  on  which  to  build  up  the  supposition  that  it  is  the  good  or 
the  superior  who  are  in  power ;  in  reality  it  is  those  who  have  seized 
power  and  who  keep  it  for  their  own  and  their  retainers'  benefit,  and 
power  is  always  seized  by  those  who  are  less  conscientious  and  less 
moral.  The  good  can  not  seize  power,  nor  retain  it ;  to  do  this, 
men  must  love  power.  And  love  of  power  is  inconsistent  with 
goodness ;  but  quite  consistent  with  the  very  opposite  qualities — 
pride,  cunning,  cruelty. 

In  the  transitions  of  power  within  a  state  from  onepersonage 
to  another,  the  power  has  rarely  passed  from  a  worse  person  to  a 
better  ^ne.  When  Louis  XVI.  was  removed  and  Robespierre  came 
to  power,  and  afterward  Napoleon — who  ruled  then,  a  better  man 
or  a  worse?  And  when  were  better  men  in  power,  when  the  Ver- 
saillist  party  or  when  the  Commune  was  in  power?  When  Charles  1. 
was  ruler,  or  when  Cromwell?  And  when  Peter  III.  was  czar,  or 
when  he  was  killed  and  Catherine  was  czarina  in  one  half  of  Russia 
and  Pugachev  ruled  the  other?  Which  was  bad  then  and  which 
was  good  ?  All  men  who  happen  to  be  in  authority  assert  that  their 
authority  is  necessary  to  keep  the  bad  from  oppressing  the  good, 
assuming  that  they  themselves  are  the  good  par  excellence,  who  pro- 
tect other  good  people  from  the  bad.  In  reality,  however,  vvithdui 
the  aggrandizement  and  the  abasement  of  others,  without  hypocri- 
sies and  deceptions,  without  prisons,  fortresses,  executions,  and 
murders,  no  power  can  come  into  existence  or  be  maintained. 

Government  rests  on  bodily  violence.  The  possibility  of  apply- 
ing bodily  violence  to  people  is  provided  above  all  by  an  organiza- 


J     CRITICAL    S'J'UDV.  IT 

tion  of  armed  men,  trained  to  act  in  unison  in  submission  to  one  will. 
These  bands  of  armed  men,  submissive  to  a  single  will,  are  what 
constitute  the  army.  The  army  has  always  been  and  still  is  the 
basis  of  power.  Power  is  always  in  the  hands  of  those  who  control  the 
army,  and  all  men  in  power — from  the  Roman  Csesars  to  the  Russian 
and  German  emperors — take  more  interest  in  their  army  than  in 
any  thing,  and  court  popularity  therein  knowing  that  if  the  army  is 
on  their  side,  their  power  is  secure. 

Hitherto  it  has  been  supposed  by  those  who  submitted  to  state 
authority,  that  governments  existed  for  their  benefit;  but  the  policy 
or  even  the  unconscious  tendency  of  those  in  power  must  always 
be  to  reduce  their  subjects  to  the  extreme  of  weakness,  for  the 
weaker  the  oppressed,  the  less  effort  need  be  made  to  keep  him  in 
subjection.  And  therefore  the  oppression  of  the  oppressed  always 
goes  on  growing  up  to  the  furthest  limit,  beyond  which  it  can  not 
go  without  killing  the  goose  with  the  golden  eggs.  And  if  the  goose 
lays  no  more  eggs,  like  the  American  Indians,  negroes,  and  Fijians, 
then  it  is  killed  in  spite  of  the  sincere  protests  of  philanthropists. 

Armies  are  maintained  and  strengthened  by  the  governments  not 
only  to  defend  the  state  against  other  states  but  above  all  to  keep 
enslaved  their  own  subjects.  That  has  always  been  necessary  and 
has  become  more  and  more  necessary  with  the  increased  diffusion 
of  education  among  the  masses,  with  the  improved  communication 
between  people  of  the  same  and  of  different  nationalities.  It  has 
become  particularly  indispensable  now  in  the  face  of  communism, 
socialism,  anarchism,  and  the  labor  movement  generally.  Govern- 
ments feel  that  it  is  so  and  strengthen  the  force  of  their  disciplined 
armies.  In  the  German  Reichstag  not  long  ago,  in  reply  to  a  ques- 
tion why  funds  were  needed  for  raising  the  salaries  of  the  under 
officers,  the  German  Chancellor  openly  declared  that  trustworthy 
under  officers  were  necessary  to  contend  against  socialism.  Caprivi 
only  said  aloud  what  every  statesman  knows  and  assiduously  con- 
ceals from  the  people.  The  reason  to  which  he  gave  expression  is 
essentially  the  same  as  that  which  made  the  French  kings  and  popes 
engage  Sw-iss  and  Scotch  guards,  and  makes  the  Russian  authorities 
of  to-day  carefully  distribute  the  recruits  in  such  a  manner  that  the 
regiments  from  the  frontiers  are  stationed  in  central  districts,  and 


OA]^ 


IS  TOLSTOI: 

the  regiments  from  the  center  are  stationed  on  the  frontiers.  The 
meaning  of  Caprivi's  speech,  put  into  plain  language,  is  that  funds 
are  needed,  not  to  resist  foreign  foes,  but  to  buy  under-officers  to 
be  ready  to  act  against  the  enslaved  toiling  masses. 

The  violence  of  governments  is  made  possible  by  the  violence 
which  it  exacts  from  its  subjects.  Government  not  only  asks  sub- 
mission to  violence  but  demands  violence  and  thus  by  means  of  uni- 
versal military  service,  it  renders  all  citizens  their  own  oppressors: 
It  demands  obedience  by  making  the  oath  of  allegiance  obligatory 
on  all  Russian  subjects  on  each  new  accession  to  the  throne  by  a 
czar,  by  taxes  applied  to  acts  of  violence,  by  obligatory  police  ser- 
vice, etc. 

Four  methods  are  employed  by  the  government  to  enlist  its  sub- 
,  ,      -       jects  in  the  work  of  violence,  organized  by  the  aid  of  science  into  a 
0J/^,  skilful  system  carried  to  such  a  point  of  perfection  that  every  one 

iAiv^  is  caught  in  the  circle  of  violence  and  has  no  chance  of  escape  from 
1^  it.  The  first  and  oldest  method  is  intimidation.  This  consists  in 
representing  the  existing  state  organization — whatever  it  may  be, 
free  republic  or  the  most  savage  despotism — as  something  sacred 
and  immutable,  and  therefore  following  any  efforts  to  alter  it  with 
the  crudest  punishments.  This  method  is  in  use  now — as  it  has  been 
from  olden  times — wdierever  there  is  a  government ;  in  Russia 
against  the  so-called  nihilists,  in  America  against  anarchists,  in 
France  against  imperialists,  legitimists,  communards  and  anarchists. 
:>.  The  second  method  is  corruption.     It  consists  of  plundering  the 

industrious  working  people  of  their  wealth  by  means  of  taxes,  and 
distributing  it  in  satisfying  the  greed  of  officials,  who  are  bound 
in  return  to  support  and  keep  up  the  oppression  of  the  people.  These 
bought  officials,  from  the  highest  minister  to  the  poorest  copying 
clerks,  make  up  an  u})bnjken  network  of  men  bound  together  by  the 
same  interest — that  of  living  at  the  expense  of  the  people.  They 
become  the  richer  the  more  submissively  they  carry  out  the  will  of 
the  government ;  and  at  all  times  and  places,  sticking  at  nothing  in 
all  departments,  support  by  word  and  deed  the  violence  of  govern- 
ments, on  which  their  own  property  also  rests. 

The  third  method  is  what  Tolstoi  describes  as  hypnotizing  thQ 

1  people.     This  consists  in  checking  tlie  moral  development  of  men 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  19 

and  by  various  suggestions  keeping  iheni  back  in  the  ideal  of  life, 
outgrown  by  mankind  at  large,  on  which  the  power  of  government 
rests.  This  h}pnotizing  process  is  organized  at  the  present  in  the 
most  complex  manner  and  starting  from  childhood,  continues  to  act 
on  men  till  the  day  of  tlieir  death.  It  begins  in  their  earliest  years 
in  the  compulsory  schools  created  for  this  purpose,  in  which  the 
children  have  instilled  into  them,  the  ideas  of  life  of  their  ancestors, 
which  are  in  direct  antagonism  with  the  conscience  of  the  modern 
world.  In  countries  where  there  is  a  state  religion,  they  teach  the 
children  the  senseless  blasphemies  of  the  church  catechisms,  together 
with  the  duty  of  obedience  to  their  superiors.  In  republican  states, 
they  teach  them  the  savage  superstition  of  patriotism  and  the  same 
pretended  obedience  to  the  governing  authorities. 

The  fourth  method  consists  in  selecting  from  all  the  men  who 
have  been  stupelied  and  enslaved  by  the  three  former  methods  a 
certain  number,  exposing  them  to  special  and  intensified  means  of 
stupefaction  and  brutalization,  and  so  making  them  into  a__passi_vx 
instrument  for  carrying  out  a]J  the  cruelti£s__and  brutalities  neede(l. 
^by  the_gpvernment.  Intimidation,  corruption  and  hypnotism  bring 
people  into  a  condition  in  which  they  are  willing  to  be  soldiers ;  the 
soldiers  give  the  power  of  punishing  and  plundering  them  (and  pur- 
chasing officials  with  the  spoils)  and  hypnotizing  them  and  convert- 
ing them  in  time  into  these  same  soldiers  again. 

The  gospel  of  Christ  substitutes  the  law  of  love  for  the  state. 
In  a  system  founded  on  the  precepts  of  love,  men  would  live  in 
universal  brotherhood  without  recognizing  any  authority.  Such  a 
system  is  not  only  desirable  but  it  is  compatible  with  the  present 
stage  of  moral  development,  for  however  ignorant  or  superstitiou.s 
he  may  be,  every  man  of  the  present  day  knows  that  all  men  have 
an  equal  right  to  life  and  the  good  things  of  life,  and  that  one  set  of 
people  are  no  better  nor  worse  than  another,  that  all  are  equal. 
Indeed  he  recognizes  the  impossibility  of  the  existing  order  of  things 
and  the  necessity  for  the  establishment  of  new  forms  of  life.  Under 
the  new  order,  men  will  also  live  in  communities,  but  these  com- 
munities will  not  be  held  together  by  promises,  for  Christ  forbid=; 
the  making  of  any  vows.  Society  must  l)c  maintained  by  spiritual 
influence,  for  the  man  who  follows  a  spiritual  influence  acts  accord- 


'.'0  TOLSTOI: 

ing  lo  liis  own  desires.  The  more  spiritually  advanced  exert  an 
influence  over  the  less  advanced,  and  the  efficacy  of  this  influence 
lies  in  the  tendency  of  the  less  thinking  people  to  follow  the  example 
of  those  who  stand  intellectually  on  a  higher  level. 

it  is  asked,  how  will  the  function  at  present  performed  by  the 
government  be  fuffilled  in  the  future  state  of  society?  In  the  first 
place,  as  to  defense  against  the  attacks  of  the  evil-disposed.  But 
who  are  those  evil-disposed  persons  in  our  midst  from  whose  attacks 
we  are  preserved  by  the  state  and  its  army?  Even  if  three  or  four 
centuries  ago,  when  men  prided  themselves  on  their  war-like  prow- 
ess, when  killing  men  was  considered  a  heroic  achievement,  there 
were  such  persons ;  we  know  very  well  that  there  are  no  such  per- 
sons now,  that  we  do  not  nowadays  carry  or  use  fire-arms,  but 
every  one  professes  humane  principles  and  feels  sympathy  for  his 
fellows,  and  wants  nothing  more  than  we  all  do — that  is,  to  be  left 
in  peace  to  enjoy  his  existence  undisturbed.  So  that  nowadays  there 
are  no  special  malefactors  from  w'hom  the  state  could  defend  us. 
If  by  these  evil-disposed  persons,  is  meant  the  men  who  are  punished 
as  criminals,  we  know  very  well  that  they  are  not  a  different  kind 
of  beings  like  wild  beasts  among  sheep,  but  are  men  just  like  our- 
selves, and  no  more  naturally  inclined  to  crimes  than  those  against 
whom  they  commit  them.  We  know  that  their  number  can  be  di- 
minished only  by  change  of  environment  and  moral  influence.  So  that 
the  justification  of  state  violence  on  the  ground  of  the  protection  it 
gives  us  from  evil-disposed  persons,  even  if  it  had  some  foundation 
three  or  four  centuries  ago,  has  none  whatever  now. 

Secondly,  as  to  education,  culture,  means  of  communication,  and 
so  on.  Without  the  state,  it  is  said,  men  would  not  have  been  able  to 
form  the  social  institutions  needed  for  doing  anything.  This  argu- 
ment too  was  well  founded  only  some  centuries  ago.  If  there  was 
a  time  when  people  w^ere  so  disunited,  when  they  had  so  little  means, 
of  communication  and  interchange  of  ideas,  that  they  could  not 
cooperate  and  agree  together  in  any  common  action  in  commerce, 
economies,  or  education  without  the  state  as  a  center,  this  want  of 
common  action  exists  no  longer.  The  great  extension  of  means  of 
communication  and  interchange  of  ideas  has  made  men  completely 
able  to  dispense  with  state  aid  in   forming  societies,  associations, 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  21 

corporations,  and  congresses  for  scientific,  economic  and  political 
objects.  Indeed  government  is  more  often  an  obstacle  than  an 
assistance  in  attaining  these  aims.  From  the  end  of  last  century, 
there  has  hardly  been  a  single  progressive  movement  of  humanity 
which  has  not  been  retarded  by  the  government. 

Thirdly,  it  is  claimed  that  without  governments,  nations  would 
be  enslaved  by  their  neighbors.  The  government,  they  tell  us,  with 
its  army,  is  necessary  to  defend  us  from  neighboring  states  who  might 
enslave  us.  But  we  know  this  is  what  all  governments  say  of  one 
another,  and  yet  we  know  that  all  the  European  nations  profess  the 
same  principles  of  liberty  and  fraternity,  and  therefore  stand  in  no 
need  of  protection  against  one  another.  And  if  defense  against  bar- 
barous nations  is  meant,  one-thousandth  part  of  the  troops  now  under 
arms,  would  be  amply  sufficient  for  that  purpose.  Moreover,  a  society 
based  on  the  precepts  of.  Christ  which  inflicts  no  injury  on  any  one, 
and  where  the  surplus  of  labor  is  given  away  to  others,  can  have 
no  fear  of  murder  or  torture  at  the  hands  of  an  enemy,  whether  it 
be  the  Germans,  the  Turks,  or  savages.  They  can  take  away  only 
what  the  people  would  have  voluntarily  given  to  them. 

With  regard  to  the  new  order  of  things,  it  is  impossible  to  know 
precisely  the  detailed  forms  it  will  assume.  But  this  uncertainty 
ought  not  to  deter  men  from  striving  to  attain  the  new  life.  If 
Columbus  had  allowed  himself  to  be  guided  by  such  considerations 
he  would  never  have  weighed  anchor.  It  was  madness  to  set  ofif 
on  the  ocean,  not  knowing  the  route,  on  the  ocean  on  which  no  one 
had  sailed,  to  sail  toward  a  land  whose  existence  was  doubtful.  By 
this  madness  he  discovered  a  new  world.  Doubtless  if  the  peoples  of 
the  world  could  simply  transfer  themselves  from  one  furnished  man- 
sion to  another  and  a  better  one,  it  would  make  it  much  easier;  but 
unluckily  there  is  no  one  to  get  humanity's  new  dwelling  ready  for 
it.  The  future  is  even  worse  than  the  ocean — there  is  nothing  there 
— it  will  be  what  men  and  circumstances  make  it. 

It  is  not  even  this  question  "  What  will  happen?  "  that  agitates 
men  as  much  when  they  hesitate  to  fulfil  the  Master's  will,  as  they 
are  troubled  by  the  question  how  to  live  without  those  habitual 
conditions  of  life  which  we  call  civilization,  culture,  art  and  science. 
Rut  all  these  we  know  are  onlv  various  manifestations  of  truth,  and 


23  TOLSTOI: 

tlie  change  that  is  before  us  is  to  be  made  only  for  the  sake  of  a 
closer  attainment  and  reahzation  of  truth.  How  then  can  the 
manifestation  of  truth  disappear  through  our  reaUzing  it?  These 
manifestations  will  be  different,  higher,  better,  but  they  will  not 
cease  to  be.  Only  what  is  false  in  them  will  be  destroyed ;  all  the 
truth  in  them  will  only  be  stronger  and  more  flourishing. 

The  unknown  world  on  which  men  are  entering  in  renouncing 
their  habitual  ways  of  life,  appears  itself  as  dreadful  to  them,  but 
if  a  man,  before  he  passed  from  one  stage  to  another,  could  know 
his  future  life  in  full  detail,  he  would  have  nothing  to  live  for.  It 
is  the  same  with  the  life  of  humanity.  If  it  had  a  program  of  the 
life  which  awaited  it  before  entering  a  new  stage,  it  would  be  the 
surest  sign  that  it  was  not  living,  nor  advancing,  but  simply  rotating 
in  the  same  place.  The  conditions  of  the  new  order  of  life  can  not 
be  known  by  us  because  we  have  to  create  them  by  our  own  labors. 
That  is  all  that  life  is,  to  learn  the  unknoAvn,  and  to  adapt  our 
actions  to  this  new  knowledge.  That  is  the  life  of  each  individual 
man,  and  that  is  the  life  of  human  societies  and  of  humanity. 

{o  PROPERTY. 

''^'  Together  with  laws,  Tolstoi  repudiates  property  maintained  by 
law.  Even  if  this  system  were  necessary  in  the  past  when  the  sense 
of  fellowship  and  humaneness  was  not  as  strong  in  men  as  it  is  at 
present,  the  existing  organization  has  outlived  its  time,  and  must 
inevitably  be  reconstructed  on  new  principles.  Even  if  property 
did  not  exist,  there  would  be  no  wild  scramble  among  men  of  to-day 
for  the  possession  of  goods,  for  every  one  recognizes  nowadays  the 
commandment  of  universal  love,  and  every  one  knows  that  all  men 
have  an  equal  right  to  life  and  the  good  things  of  life. 

jProperty  is  opposed  to  love  and  to  the-orinciple  ^  absolute 
equality  among  mem  It  is  based  on  violence  inasmuch  as  it  makes 
the  poor  dependent  on  the  rich,  and  hence  the  rich  are  guilty  by  the 
very  fact  of  being  rich.  It  is  a  crime  that  some  should  live  in  super- 
abundance and  luxury  while  thousands  suftcr  from  the  want  of  the 
bare  necessities  of  existence. 

"   Property  is  the  right  to  the  exclusive  use  of  certain  objects  by 
their  owner  whether  the  owner  need  them  or  not.     But  according  to 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  23 

the  law  of  love  which  f()rl)i(ls  the  acciiiiiulation  of  wealth  and  coiiil 
niands  that  each  man  devote  all  his  life-work  for  others  withoulj 
demanding  the  lahor  of  his  fellowmen,  and  sharing  all  he  has  witli 
them — according  to  that  law,  every  man  who  does  what  work  he  can,,  fitrvvv/n^ 
should  have  as  much  hut  only  as  much  as  he  requires^  v. 

A  living  example  of  a  state  of  things  where  property  is  non- 
existent, and  goods  are  held  in  common,  is  afforded  hy  the  Russian 
colonists.  These  on  settling  on  a  piece  of  ground  begin  to  work  it, 
and  it  does  not  occur  to  them  that  any  one  who  does  not  make  use 
of  the  soil  can  have  any  right  to  it ;  on  the  contrary,  the  colonists 
naturally  regard  the  land  as  common  property  and  consider  every 
man  thoroughly  justified  in  plowing  and  gathering  wdiere  he  will. 
They  make  implements  for  the  tilling  of  the  soil,  the  laying  out  of 
gardens,  and  the  construction  of  houses,  and  again  it  does  not  enter 
their  minds  that  these  could  yield  an  income  in  and  for  themselves ; 
on  the  contrary,  the  colonists  look  on  every  kind  of  profit  from  the 
means  of  production,  on  all  interest  for  borrowed  grain,  and  so  on, 
as  an  injustice.  They  work  on  a  land  and  soil  free  from  any  kind 
of  a  master,  with  instruments  of  labor  of  their  own,  or  borrowed 
w  ithout  interest ;  each  for  himself  or  all  together  on  a  common  basis. 
Such  communal  societies  are  not  peculiar  to  the  Russian  colonists 
alone.  They  have  existed  at  all  times  and  still  exist  wherever  the 
natural  condition  of  man's  life  has  not  in  some  manner  been  dis- 
turbed. 

d)  THE  REAUZATIOS. 

The  realization  of  the  new  life  based  on  the  principles  of  love  is 
to  be  brought  about  according  to  Tolstoi,  not  by  the  violent  over- 
throw of  the  present  order  of  things,  but  by  the  refusal  of  every  man 
who  has  arrived  at  a  recognition  of  the  truth,  to  take  a  hand  in  the 
work  of  the  various  institutions  which  support  this  system — law, 
government,   properly — and   by  the  endeavor  of  each  to  bring  as 

/many  others  as  possible  to  a  recognition  of  the  same  truth,  that  is, 
of  the\necessity  for  every  true  Christian  to  strive  toward  a  consum- 

'jjiation  of  that  condition  of  life  in  which  it  shall  be  possible  for  all 
to  live  in  consonance  with  reason  and  the  law  of  love. 

As  the  wrongs  of  the  present  system  are  the  outcome  not  of  the 


24  TOLSTOI: 

inherent  nature  of  man  but  of  public  opinion,  it  is  necessary  in 
order  to  the  reahzation  of  a  hfe  in  keeping  with  our  recognition  of 
the  truth,  to  replace  the  present  public  opinion,  no  longer  answering 
the  inner  convictions  of  men,  by  a  new  and  living  public  opinion. 
There  would  be  no  way  out  of  our  present  position  except  that  a  man 
(and  thereby  all  men)  is  gifted  with  the  power  of  forming  a  differ- 
ent, higher  theory  of  life,  which  at  once  frees  him  from  all  the  bonds 
by  which  he  seems  indissolubly  fettered.  This  independence  is- 
gained,  not  by  means  of  strife,  not  by  the  destruction  of  existing 
forms  of  life,  but  only  by  a  change  in  the  interpretation  of  life. 
This  independence  results  from  the  Christian  recognizing  the  law  of 
love,  revealed  to  him  by  his  teacher,  as  perfectly  sufficient  for  all 
human  relations,  and  therefore  he  regards  every  use  of  force  as  un- 
necessary and  unlawful.  ''  Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth 
shall  make  you  free." 

Those  who  have  recognized  the  truth  have  it  in  their  power  lo 
bring  about  this  change  of  public  opinion.  It  must  not  be  argued 
that  because  it  took  eighteen  centuries  for  but  a  small  section  of 
humanity  to  pass  over  to  Christianity,  it  must  be  many  times  eighteen 
centuries  before  all  the  remainder  do  the  same.  Men  do  not  only 
assimilate  a  truth  through  recognizing  it  by  prophetic  insight,  or  bv 
experience  of  life.  When  the  truth  has  become  sufficiently  diffused, 
men  at  a  lower  stage  of  development  accept  it  all  widely  at  once 
simply  through  confidence  in  those  who  have  reached  it  by  the  inner 
spiritual  way,  and  are  applying  it  to  life.  Public  opinion  has  the 
power  of  working  on  men  by  infection,  and  with  great  rapidity  gains 
a  hold  on  great  numbers  of  men.  Just  as  a  single  shock  may  be 
sufficient,  when  a  liquid  is  saturated  with  some  salt,  to  precipitate  it  at 
once  in  crystals,  a  slight  effort  may  be  perhaps  all  that  is  needed  now 
that  the  truth  already  revealed  to  men  may  gain  a  mastery  over 
hundreds,  thousands,  millions  of  men,  that  a  public  opinion  con- 
sistent with  conscience  may  be  established  and  through  this  change 
of  public  opinion  the  whole  order  of  life  may  be  transformed.  And 
it  depends  on  us  to  make  this  effort. 

The  means  to  bring  about  the  necessary  change  in  public  opinion 
consists,  in  the  first  place,  in  the  putting  into  practise  of  the  new 
iheorv  of  life  bv  llmsc  who  ha\'o  rccocfnized  the  truth.     Truth   is 


^     CRITIC  AL    STUDY.  3a 

imparled  to  nieii  by  acls  of  truth.  In  reality,  therefore,  one  ought, 
if  a  landowner,  to  give  up  the  lands  immediately  to  the  poor;  if  a 
capitalist  or  manufacturer,  to  turn  over  the  money  to  his  work  peo- 
ple; or  if  a  czar,  minister,  official,  judge  or  general,  to  renounce  im- 
mediately the  advantages  of  the  position ;  or  if  a  soldier  on  whom  all 
the  system  of  violence  is  based,  to  refuse  innnediately  to  obey  in 
spite  of  all  the  dangers  of  insubordination.  But  it  may  happen, 
and  it  is  most  likely,  that  he  will  not  have  the  strength  to  do  so. 
lie  has  relations,  a  family,  subordinates  and  superiors;  he  is  under 
an  influence  so  powerful  that  he  can  not  shake  it  off. 

Another  efifective  means  to  the  same  end,  is  the  free  and  open 
profession  of  the  truth  one  has  come  to  recognize.  A  man  may  not 
have  it  in  his  power  to  live  up  immediately  to  his  new  concept  of  life, 
but  there  is  one  thing,  and  only  one  thing,  in  which  it  is  granted  to 
you  to  be  free  in  life,  that  is,  to  profess  the  truth.  If  men,  nay 
only  single  individuals,  were  to  do  this,  then  the  old  outlived  public 
opinion  would  at  once  fall  of  itself  and  a  new,  living  and  present 
one  spring  up  in  its  place.  If  men  who  had  arrived  at  the  new 
conception  were  but  bold  enough  to  speak  their  minds,  the  uselessness 
or  stupidity  and  even  inconvenience  of  the  present  institutions  would 
soon  become  obvious  to  all.  Those  who  fill  offices  based  upon 
violence  would  find  themselves  in  the  position  of  the  emperor  in 
Andersen's  tale  of  "  The  Emperor's  New  Clothes,"  for  directly 
some  one  who  has  no  interest  in  concealing  their  uselessness  will 
exclaim  in  all  simplicity :  "  But  these  people  have  been  of  no  use  to 
any  one  for  a  long  time  past !  " 

In  order  to  bring  about  the  abolition  of  the  present  system — law, 
government,  property — it  is  further  necessary  that  men  who  have 
come  to  a  recognition  of  the  truth,  should  live  in  accordance  with 
that  truth,  refusing  to  take  part  in  any  of  the  acts  of  violence  de- 
manded by  the  present  order.  It  is  through  the  efiforts  of  the 
people  themselves  that  the  new  order  of  life  can  be  brought  into  the 
world. 

Not  by  means  of  violence,  however,  must  the  present  order  be 
abolished.  The  method  of  the  revolutionary  enemies  is  that  of 
attacking  the  government  from  without.  Christianity  does  not  at- 
tack it  at  all,  but  from  within  it  destroys  all  the  foundations  on  which 


26  TOLSTOI: 

government  rests.  The  revolutionists  say:  "The  form  of  govern- 
ment is  bad  in  this  respect  and  that  respect ;  we  must  overturn  i' 
and  substitute  this  or  that  form  of  government,"  under  which,  they 
maintain,  "  oppression  will  be  unnecessary."  But  they  deceive  them- 
selves. Even  if  we  admit  that  under  a  combination  of  circum- 
stances specially  unfavorable  for  the  government,  as  in  France  in 
1870,  any  government  might  be  forcibly  overturned  and  the  power 
transferred  to  other  hands,  the  new  authority  would  rarely  be  less 
oppressive  than  the  old  one  ;  on  the  contrary,  always  having  to  defend 
itself  against  its  dispossessed  and  exasperated  enemies,  it  would  be 
more  despotic  and  cruel,  as  has  always  been  the  rule  in  all  revolu- 
tions. 

The  ameliorations  of  life  must  be  brought  about  as  the  result 
of  the  personal  efforts  of  individual  men.  Those  who  recognize  the 
Christian  teaching  must  refuse  all  support  of  the  present  order,  re- 
fuse to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  government,  refuse  to  pay 
taxes,  refuse  to  take  part  in  law  proceedings  or  in  military  service, 
and  live  in  accordance  with  his  new  conception  of  life.  It  is  thus 
that  every  man  can  free  himself.  The  Christian  is  independent  of 
every  human  authority  by  the  fact  that  he  regards  the  divine  law 
of  love,  implanted  in  the  soul  of  every  man,  and  brought  before  his 
consciousness  by  Christ,  as  the  sole  guide  of  his  life  and  other  men's 
also. 

Cases  of  refusing  to  comply  with  the  demands  of  the  govenmient 
when  they  are  opposed  to  Christianity,  such  as  swearing  allegiance 
to  the  government,  the  payment  of  taxes,  acting  as  jurymen,  and 
especially  serving  in  the  army,  are  of  late  occurring  everywhere — in 
Russia,  Austria,  Germany,  Switzerland,  France  and  Sweden — and 
are  becoming  more  and  more  freijiK'nt.  The  governiiK'nts  are  power- 
less against  them,  for  in  all  these  cases,  the  tnotives  given  are  so 
excellent  that,  however  despotic  governments  may  be,  they  could 
hardly  punish  them.  To  punish  men  for  refusing  to  act  against 
their  consciences,  the  government  must  renounce  all  claim  to  good 
sense  and  benevolence.  Governments  can  of  course,  flog  to  death 
or  execute  or  keep  in  perpetual  imprisonment  all  enemies  who  want 
to  overturn  them  by  violence.  But  what  can  they  do  against  men 
who,  without  wishing  to  overturn  or  destroy  anything,  desire  simply 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY,  27 

for  their  part  to  do  nothing  against  the  law  of  Christ,  and  who, 
therefore,  refuse  to  perform  the  commonest  state  requirements,  which 
are,  therefore,  the  most  indispensable  to  the  maintenance  of  the  state? 
Tlie  socialists,  the  communists,  the  anarchists,  with  their  bombs  ami 
riots  and  revolutions,  are  not  nearly  so  much  dreaded  by  govern- 
ments as  these  disconnected  individuals  coming  from  different  parts, 
and  all  justifying  their  non-compliance  on  the  ground  of  the  same 
religion,  which  is  known  to  all  the  world. 

It  may  be  asserted  that  no  significance  can  be  attached  to  a  few 
scattered  cases  of  individual  men  refusing  to  comply  with  the  de- 
mands of  the  government ;  that  it  would  be  necessary  that  all  the 
coarse,  half-savage  men  completely  incapable  of  appreciating  Chris- 
tianity or  acting  on  it,  of  whom  there  are  always  a  great  many  in 
every  Christian  society,  should  be  converted  to  Christianity  before 
the  Christianizing  process  could  so  affect  all  men  one  after  another 
that  they  would  pass  from  the  heathen  to  the  Christian  conception 
of  life.  This  criticism  would  be  perfectly  just,  if  the  transition  from 
one  conception  of  life  to  another  were  only  accomplished  by  the 
single  process  of  all  men,  separately  and  successively,  realizing, 
each  for  himself,  the  emptiness  of  power,  and  reaching  Christian 
truth  by  the  inner  spiritual  path.  But  there  is  also  another  external 
means  by  which  men  reach  Christianity  and  by  which  the  transition 
is  less  gradual.  This  transition  from  one  organization  of  life  to 
another  is  not  accomplished  by  degrees  like  the  sand  running  through 
the  hour-glass,  grain  after  grain.  It  is  more  like  the  water  filling  a 
vessel  floating  on  water.  At  first  the  water  only  runs  in  slowly  on 
one  side,  but  as  the  vessel  grows  heavier  it  suddenly  begins  to  sink, 
and  almost  instantaneously  fills  with  water.  It  is  just  the. same 
with  the  transitions  of  mankind  from  one  conception — and  so  from 
one  organization  of  life — to  another.  At  first  only  gradually  and 
slowly,  one  after  another,  men  attain  to  the  new  truth  by  the  inner 
spiritual  way,  and  follow  it  out  in  life.  But  when  a  certain  point  in 
the  diffusion  of  the  truth  has  been  reached,  it  is  suddenly  assimilated, 
by  every  one,  not  by  the  inner  way,  but  as  it  were  involuntarily. 

If  not  for  further  endeavor  of  each  individual  to  live  up  to  the 
new  truth,  it  would  never  be  possible  for  men  in  the  aggregate  to 
attain  the  new  life.     Men  in  their  present  condition  are  like  a  swarm 


'iti  TOLSTOI: 

of  bees  hanging"  in  a  cluslcr  to  a  branch.  Ihe  position  of  the  bees 
on  the  branch  is  temporary,  and  must  inevitably  be  changed.  They 
must  start  oft  and  find  themselves  a  habitation.  Each  of  the  bees 
knows  this,  and  desires  to  change  its  own,  and  the  others'  position, 
but  no  one  of  them  can  do  it.  They  can  not  all  start  off  at  once, 
because  one  hangs  on  to  another  and  hinders  it  from  separating 
from  the  swa^^m,  and  therefore  they  all  continue  to  hang  there.  It 
would  seem  that  the  bees  could  never  escape  from  their  position,  just 
as  it  seems  that  worldly  men  caught  in  the  toils  of  the  state  concep-. 
tion  of  life,  can  never  escape.  And  there  would  be  no  escape  for  the 
bees,  if  each  of  them  were  not  a  living,  separate  creature,  endowed 
with  wings  of  its  own.  Similarly  there  would  be  no  escape  for  men 
if  each  were  not  a  living  being  endowed  with  the  faculty  of  entering 
into  a  Christian  conception  of  life.  If  every  bee  who  could  fly,  did 
not  try  to  Hy,  the  others  too  would  never  be  stirred,  and  the  swarm 
would  never  change  its  position.  And  if  the  man  who  has  mastered 
the  Christian  conception  of  life,  would  not,  without  waiting  for  other 
people,  begin  to  live  in  accordance  with  this  conception,  mankind 
would  never  change  its  position.  But  let  only  one  bee  spread  its 
wings,  start  off,  and  fly  away,  and  after  it  another  and  another, 
and  the  clinging,  inert  cluster  would  become  a  freely  flying  swarm 
of  bees.  Just  in  the  same  way,  only  let  one  man  look  at  life  as 
Christianity  teaches  him  to  look  at  it,  and  after  him  let  another  and 
another  do  the  same,  and  the  enchanted  circle  of  existence  in  the 
state  conception  of  life,  from  which  there  seemed  no  escape,  will  be 
broken  through. 

If  every  man  of  the  present  order,  who  recognizes  Christianity, 
were  to  live  in  accordance  with  it,  the  ruling  authorities  would  soon 
find  themselves  in  the  position  of  a  conqueror  who  is  trying  to  save 
a  town  which  has  been  set  on  fire  by  its  own  inhabitants.  Directly 
he  puts  out  the  conflagration  in  one  place,  it  is  alight  in  two  other 
places ;  directly  he  gives  in  to  the  fire  and  cuts  oflf  what  is  on  fire 
from  a  large  building,  the  building  itself  is  alight  on  both  ends. 
These  separate  fires  may  be  few,  but  they  are  burning  with  a  flame 
which  however  small  a  space  it  starts  from,  never  ceases  till  it  has  set 
the  whole  ablaze. 

However  small  the  number  of  men  who  can  arrive  at  a  recogni- 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  39 

tion  of  new  truths  through  their  inner  spiritual  intuition,  all  men 
in  varying  degrees  according  to  their  age,  their  education,  and  their 
race,  are  capable  of  understanding  the  new  truths ;  and  first  those 
who  are  nearest  to  the  men  who  have  attained  the  new  truth  by 
spiritual  intuition,  slowly  and  one  by  one,  but  afterward  more  and 
more  quickly,  pass  over  to  the  new  truth.  Thus  the  number  of  men 
who  accept  the  new  truth  becomes  greater  and  greater,  and  the 
truth  becomes  more  and  more  comprehensible.  And  thus  more  con- 
fidence is  aroused  in  the  remainder  who  are  at  a  less  advanced  stage 
of  capacity  for  understanding  the  truth.  And  it  becomes  easier  for 
them  to  grasp  it,  and  an  increasing  number  accept  it.  And  so  the 
movement  goes  on  more  and  more  quickly,  and  on  an  ever-increasing 
scale,  like  a  snowball,  till  at  last  a  public  opinion  in  harmony  with 
the  new  truth  is  created,  and  then  the  whole  mass  of  men  is  carried 
over  all  at  once  by  its  momentum  to  the  new  truth  and  establishes 
a  new  social  order  in  accordance  with  it. 

TOLSTOI  ON  ART: 

Tolstoi's  celebrated  essay  "  What  is  Art  "  embodies  the  result  of 
fifteen  years  ot  study  and  reflection.  After  reviewing  the  principal 
theories  on  art  from  Baumgarten  to  Herbert  Sf>encer  and  Grant 
Allen,  he  finds  them  all  unsatisfactory  and  proceeds  to  formulate 
his  own  principle. 

Art,  according  to  Tolstoi,  must  not  be  considered  as  a  means 
of  pleasure.  It  is  one  of  the  conditions  of  human  life,  one  of  the 
means  of  ^intercourse  between  man  and  man.  Like  speech,  jirt 
serves  as  a  vehicle  of  communication  among  men,  the  difference 
being  that,  whereas  by  words  a  man  transmits  his  thoughts  to 
another,  by  means  of  art  he  transmits  his  feelings. 

The  activity  of  art  is  based  on  the  capacity  of  man  to  receive 
another  man's  expression  of  feelings  and  experience  those  feelings 
himself.  Hence,  art  begins  when  one  person,  with  the  object  of  join- 
ing another  or  other  to  himself  in  one  and  the  same  feeling,  expresses 
that  feeling  by  certain  external  indications.  Art,  therefore,  must 
be  infectious.  The  spectators  or  auditors  must  be  infected  by  the 
feelings  which  the  author  has  felt.  From  this  follows  the  full 
definition :  "  Art  is  a  human  activity,  consisting  in  this,  that  one 


m 


30  TOLSTOI: 

man  consciously,  by  means  of  certain  external  signs,  hands  on  to 
others  feelings  he  has  Hved  through,  and  that  other  people  are  in- 
fected by  these  feelings  and  also  experience  them." 

The  infection  produced  by  an  art-creation  must  be  spontaneous. 
If  a  man  without  exercising  effort  and  without  altering  his  stand- 
point, on  reading,  hearing,  or  seeing  another  man's  work,  experiences 
a  mental  condition  which  unites  him  with  that  man,  and  with  other 
people  who  also  partake  of  that  work  of  art,  then  the  object  evoking 
that  condition  is  a  work  of  art.  Infection,  moreover,  is  not  only 
a  necessary  condition  of  art,  but  the  degree  of  infection  is  the  sole 
criterion  of  excellence  in  art. 

Accordmg  to  the  standard  of  excellence  art  is  to  be  distinguished 
into  two  classes :  first,  religious  art,  and,  second,  universal  art.  The 
first,  religious  art,  transmitting  both  positive  feelings  of  love  toTjod 
and  one's  neighbor,  and  negative  feelings  of  indignation  and  horror 
at  tile  vioiatiofrbf  love,  manifests  itself  chiefly  in  the  form  of  words, 
and  to  some  extent  also,  in  painting  and  sculpture ;  the  second  kind, 
universal  art,  transmitting  feelings  accessible  to  all,  manifests  itself 
in  words,  in  painting,  in  sculpture,  in  dances,  in  architecture,  and 
most  of  all  in  music. 

Art  being  a  mode  of  intercourse  between  man  and  man,  a  condi- 
tion  of  human  life,  it  follows  tliaiTfrue  art  must  apj^eal  to  all  men] 
must  be  on  a  level  with  the  common  experienceg:  ff  Immanity  In 
so  far  as  it  becomes  exclusive,  and  capable  of  interesting  only  a  small 
portion  of  mankind,  it  is  untrue.  The  object  of  art  is  to  make  at- 
tainable  by  all  men  that  (feeling  of  brothcrlioocn^ow  attained  only 
by  a  few  of  the  best  men  in  society.  Art  is  a  means  of  union  among 
men,  joining  them  in  the  same  feelings,  and  indispensable  for  the  life 
and  progress  toward  the  well-being  of  individuals  and  of  humanity. 

Hence  we  ought  to  repudiate  the  fude  savage,  and,  for  us,  often 
meaningless   works   of   the   ancient  Cireeks :   Sophocles,   Euripides. 

Aeschylus  and  especially  Aristophanes ;  of  modern  writers,  Dante, 
Tasso,  Milton,  Shakespeare  i  m  painting.  Michael  Angelo's  absurd 
"  Last  Judgment,"  and  every  representation  of  miracles,  including 
Raphael's  "  Transfiguration  ";  in  nnisic  all  but  Rach's  famous  violin 
aria,  Chopin's  nocturne  in  E  flat  major,  and  certain  parts  from  the 
works  of  Haydn,  Mozart,  Schubert,  Beethoven,  and  Chopin.     On 


A     CRITICAL    STUDY.  31 

the  other  hand  Tolstoi  instances  as  exanij^lcs  of  the  highest  art  such 
works  as  ''The  Robbers  "  by  Schiller,  "  Les  Pauvre  Gene  and 
"  Les  Miserables  "  by  Victor  Hugo,  the  works  of  Dickens,  of  Dos- 
toievski,  especially  his  "  Notes  from  a  Dead  House,"  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,"  George  Eliot's  "  Adam  Bede  " ;  in  painting,  a  picture  by 
Walter  Langley  in  the  Royal  Academy  of  1897,  a  picture  by  the 
French  artist  Morlai»,  and  the  pictures  by  Millet,  especially  his 
"  Man  with  the  Iloe." 

ANALYTIC   STUDY   OF  TOLSTOI'S   WRITINGS. 

Tolstoi's  writings  fall  naturally  into  two  classes: 

L    The  Purely  Literary. 
IL    The  EthicO'SocioIogical. 

With  the  exception  of  a  few  short  novels,  three  dramas  and  "  Resurrec- 
tion / '^]r~oF^ToTstorsliterar^ 

of  his  life^i828- i87SIP>while  those  of  the  second  class,  the  ethico-sociological 
writings,  belong  exclusively  to  the  second  period  of  his  life  (1878-1901),  the 
period  of   his   so-called   moral    regeneration. 

Period  I.  (1828=1878).    Purely  Literary  Productions. 

"Memories:     Childhood,     Boyhood,  "  Notes  of  a  Marker  "   (1856). 

Youth"   (1852-57).  "  The  Two  Hussars  "  (1856). 

The  Caucasian  Stories   (1854-56):  "Albert"  (1857). 

"  The  Cossacks."  "Lucerne"   (1857). 

"The  Invaders."  1"  Three  Deaths"  (1859). 

"The  Wood  Cutting  Expedition."  y' Family  Happiness"    (1859). 

"Snowstorm."  \|"  Polikushka  "  (i860). 

"An  Old  Acquaintance."  "  Kholstomier  "    (1861). 

The  Crimean  Stories   (1854-1855)  :  "War  and  Peace"  (1865-68). 

"Sevastopol     in     Dec,     1854,     in  "  Anna  Karenina "  (1874-78). 
May,  1855,  in  Aug.,  1855." 

Period  I.    Purely  Literary  Writings. 

The  original  character  of  Tolstoi's  creative  talent  is  amply  revealed  in  his 
earliest  compositions.     In  these  are  already  clearlv  manifested  the  matchless 


vividness  of  portraiture,  th^strong  scn^e  for  the  real  in  life,  \the  love  of  detail, 
the  extraordinary   capacity  tor  ohscrvation,   die  (cTislikc  of  all   that  is  purely./ 

(imagmativc    and    artificia)  J  the    simplicity   of   diction,    and    tlie   detached    and 
natural  manner  of  narration.  ^_____— — — ~_____ 

Tolstoi  almost  invariably  depicts  his  own  experience.  [All  his  persons  are 

*Teal.~(  The   events   he   describes   are   either  those   in   which   he   Has  tiimself 


33  TOLSTOI: 

participated,  or  such  as  are  paralleled  by  his  experiences.  He  paints  his  own 
character  over  and  over  again  in  its  various  phases,  and  draws  on  his  own 
rich  life  for  the  background.  It  is  this  feature,  added  to  his  remarkable  talent 
for  accurate  reproduction,  which  so  impresses  the  reader  with  a  sense  of  the 
real  and  inevitable  in  his  works. 

In  his  earliest  novels,  "  Memories,"  "  A  Morning  in  the  Life  of  a  Landed 
Proprietor,  ■'  Klotes  of  a  Marker."  and  "  Lucerne,"  Tolstoi  portrays  the  auto- 
biographic character  of  Nikolai  and  Irteniev  and  Prince  Nekhludov  through 
various  incidents  and  stages  of  development,  the  unifying  theme  in  all  being 
the  evil  consequences  of  a  false  and  artificial  education..  Noble  natures  at 
heart,  they  became  mere  word-heroes  and  whimsical  eccentrics,  and  at  th^ir 
first  contact  with  the  actual  world  show  their  incapacity  to  cope  with  the 
problems  of  existence,  and  are  soon  driven  to  wreck  and  ruin. 

Tolstoi's  greatest  literary  writings  of  his  first  period  are  his  novels  "  War 
and  Peace  "  and  "  Anna  Karenina ;  "  and  "  Resurrection  "  of  his  ^econd 
period.  Of  these,  "  War  and  Peace  "  and  "  Anna  Karenina  "  rank  highest 
among  his  compositions,  and  are  so  far  above  anything  he  had  written  before 
that  they  took  literary  Russia  by  surprise  and  quickly  gained  a  universal 
reputation. 

"  War  and  Peace." 

"  War  and  Peace  "  is  an  epic  of  the  time  of  the  Russian  Napoleonic  war. 
Its  action  extends  from  1S05  to  1820.  War  is  the  symbol  of  the  epoch,  but  it 
is  nowhere  Tolstoi's  method  to  give  particular  prominence  to  merely  battles 
and  public  events  as  such ;  and  in  this,  his  chief  work,  it  is  apparent  from  the 
second  part  of  the  title  that  his  aim  and  scope  are  far  more  comprehensive. 
In  fact,  he  unfolds  before  us  a  picture  of  the  entire  Russia  of  that  time,  and 
reveals  the  life  of  the  people  of  the  period  in  its  various  phases  and  depths, 
with  a  thoroughness  and  completeness  that  make  its  equal  in  any  of  the 
world'g  literature  still  to  be  supplied.  ■^ 

^hrge  snheresof  life  lare  presented  to  us,\,three  families  whos^  fortunes 
we  Tollow  down  to  the  minutest  detail.  In  the^"Snt1?5hsKis  f'amHy  we  have 
the  fqther,  an  old  general  of  Catherine's  time;  the  son,  Andrei,  statesman  and 
soldier,  who  takes  active  part  in  all  the  varying  fortunes  of  the  country;  the 
daughter,  Princess  Maria,  full  of  devotion,  self-forgetful,  all  pure  love. 
Without  affectation  we  find  the  past,  present,  and  future  of  Russian  life  mir- 
rored in  them.  The  Rostov  family  belongs  to  that  good,  honest,  mediocre 
class,  the  members  of  which  are  swept  along  by  the  current  of  life,  having 
no  ideas  which  determine  them,  and  which  become  significant  in  their  coun 
try's  history.  In  contrast  to  these  genuine,  national,  and  society  types  is  pre- 
sented a  solitary  skeptic,  Count  Pierre  Bezukhov.  He  possesses  a  really  kind, 
honest  heart,  but  is  prevented  from  accomplishing  much  good  by  a  certain 
helplessness  and  aimlessness  which  characterize  him. 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  iJS 

It  a  modern  Iliad  is  possible,  "  War  and  Peace  "  is  the  Russian  Iliad. 
Historians  have  described  and  sketched  for  us  on  the  basis  of  authentic 
sources  the  contemporary  Russian  society,  Napoleon's  and  Kutuzov's  plans 
of  operation,  the  character  of  Napoleon,  Murat,  Devoust,  Czar  Alexander, 
Kutuzov,  Bagration,  Speranski,  Rostopchin.  The  merest  details  of  the  in- 
vasion of  Russia  by  the  French  and  their  remarkable  retreat  are  familiar. 
The  historians  have  forgotten  but  one  thing  (for  which,  however,  they  are 
not  to  blame)  :  To  breathe  life  into  the  events  and  characters.  It  is  just  in 
this  that  Tolstoi  has  succeeded.  He  has  solved  the  highest  problem  of  his- 
tory and  of  poetry,  has  blended  fact_andj)oetry  into  the  highesMiving  truth. 
The  times,  the  people,  the  intellectual  currents,  the  inner  life  of  single  indi- 
viduals as  well  as  of  the  masses,  the  "  historically  great,"  the  trivial — all 
this  rises  vividly  before  our  mental  vision  in  forms  of  flesh  and  blood;  we 
see  the  single  storms,  which  together  constitute  the  character  of  an  epoch, 
out  of  which  the  process  of  historical  life  is  developed.  In  a  word,  we  learn 
_what  jiistory  does  and  how  it  makes  itself.  And  hence  "  W^r  and  Peace  "  is 
at  once  a  grand  historic  painting  and  romance.  Both  are  most  intricately 
interwoven  and  form  a  harmonious  and  inseparable  whole.  To  false  great- 
jiess  the  poet  wished  to  oppose  true  greatness  as  he  conceived  it.  This  con- 
trast is  embodied  not  only  in  the  Russian  chief  commander,  Kutuzov,  and  in 
Napoleon,  but  runs  through  all  the  moments  of  Russia's  great  national 
struggle  against  Napoleon. 

In  general  the  manifold  phases  and  movements  of  war  are  so  drawn  that 
we  can  see  into  the  soul  of  each  single  soJdier,  whether  he  be  under  the  fire 
of  the  cannon,  or  in  a  cavalry  attack,  whether  in  flight,  in  the  hospital,  or  in 
the  camp  by  a  cozy  fire.  All  this  is  usually  depicted  after  the  impressions  of 
an  eye-witness.  The  other,  the  peaceful  historic  characters,  are  drawn  also 
with  a  masterly  hand.  With  a  few  keen  strokes  the  poet  knows  how  to  present 
the  man  bodily  before  us  with  the  full  peculiarity  of  his  nature :  so  Rostopchin, 
the  minister  Speranski,  the  diplomat  Bilibin,  the  court  dame  Anna  Scherer^ 
The  salon  of  the  latter  is  introduced  into  the  book,  with  Count  Wasili  Kura,- 
gin,  the  Countess  Helene  Bezukhov,  his  daughter,  Pierre  Bezukhov  and  the 
foreigners,  the  Rustov  and  Bolkonski  families,  the  notorious  and  wild  circle 
of  the  then  jcnnesee  doree  of  the  highest  rank,  with  Anatole  Kuragin,  Pif  rre, 
and  Dolokhov  at  its  head ;  and  on  the  other  side  the  typical  aristocrat  of  the 
old  stamp,  who  would  not  yield  a  tittle  of  his  ancestral  pride,  eternally  m.oody 
and  domineering  over  all  around  him,  and  particularly  over  his  dajghter 
Marie — this  queer  old  man  who  despises  Prince  Bolkoncki,  Bonapr  te  and 
the  whole  world,  and  shows  himself  a  "  Roman  "  at  the  moment  when  his  son 
Andrei  goes  to  war:  "  Remember  this  one  thing.  Prince  Andrei,"  he  says, 
with  emotion,  ^  if  you  are  kHled,  it  will  pain  the  old  man,  your  father,  but 
if  I  learn  that  you  have  not  borne  yourself^  like  the  son  of  Nikolai  Bolkonski. 
then  I  shall  be  ashamed."  And  Prince  Andrei,  one  of  the  chief  personages  of 
the  novel,  fights,  loves  and  dies  as  aristocrat  not  only  by  birth  but  also  in  heart. 


TOLSTOI: 

The  old  prince  himself  dies  of  a  broken  heart  when  he  hears  that  the  enemy 
had  penetrated  into  the  interior  of  the  country. 

The  chief  interest  of  the  novel  (the  work  really  contains  several  novels 
interwoven)  centers  in  the  process  of  the  inner  enlightenment  of  Prince 
Andrei  and  his  remarkable  friend  Count  Pierre  Bezukhov,  the  two  typical 
representatives  of  the  better  Russia  of  the  beginning  of  the  19th  century. 
The  enlightenment  is  brought  about  in  a  different  manner  in  the  two;  in 
Andrei  Bolkonski,  on  his  death-bed,  after  being  fatally  wounded  at  Boro- 
dino; in  Pierre,  in  the  French  prison  at  Moscow,  under  the  influence  of  a 
companion  in  suffering,  the  simple  soldier  and  peasant  Platon  Karataiev. 
Both  Andrei  and  Pierre  are  "  Stiirmer  und  Dranger "  ("  Stormers  and 
Stressers")  of  their  age.  In  them  the  first  revolutionary  ferment  of  the 
Russian  intellectual  world  attains  full  expression.  They  find  no  satisfaction 
either  in  the  engrafted  ideals  of  their  own  circle,  or  in  the  large  world,  or 
in  the  self-satisfied  tone  of  the  salon-patriotism,  or  in  family  life — the  hollow 
j  product  of  this  same  world — OT^4n  the  vague  strivings  of  the  philanthropists 
j  of  freemasons.  They  find  no  outlet  from  the  labyrinth  of  their  own  dark 
I     cravings  imtil  the  overwhelming  spectacle  of  mutual  destruction,  the  fearful 

!  slaughter,  the  annihilation  of  the  hopes  and  expectations  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  suffering,  dying  and  killed  men,  friends  and  foes,  the  unworthy 
doings  of  the  self-authoftsed  executors  of  the  "  nation's  will,"  rush  in  on 
them.  Finally,  Andrei's  own  disappointed  romance  with  the  beloved  and 
love-reciprocating,  Natasha  Rostov,  breaks  his  haughtiness  and  pride  and  he 
bows  himself  before  the  weight  of  circumstances,  in  which  he  recognizes  God's 

!     providence,  even  though  already  at  the  threshold  of  the  grave.     Otherwise  is 
the  experience  of  Count  Pierre  Bezukhov,  this  great  child  with  the  strength 
of  a  lion,  so  easily  stirred,  this  colossus  with  the  soul  of  a  child,  open  to  all 
{     goodness,  and  yet  harborlessly  and  aimlessly  drifting  hither  and  thither  like 
^  ^  a  light  boat  tossed  on   a   stormy  sea;   through   the  manifold  mazes  of  the 
^  labyrinth  into  which  youthful  follies  lead  him,  his  unhappy  marriage  with  a 
ty  wicked  society  woman  who  had  become  his  wife  in  a  manner  incomprehensi- 
I   b\e  to  himself,  through  the  meaningless  formalism  of  freemasonry,  he  is  like- 
\  w-se  drawn  into  the  whirl  of  international  events;  and  thrown  together  by 
\  ch-ince  with  the  wounded  captured  soldier  Platon  Karataiev  in  the  burning 
cit>  of  Moscow,  occupied  by  the  French,  there  opens  up  to  him  an  altogether 
new  world  of  which  he  had  not  dreamed.     Karataiev,  the  simple  man,  who 
in  hi:  plainness  of  heart  and  faithful  submissiveness  brings  love  to  all  whom 
he  meets,  and  out  of  his  rich  treasury  of  soul  and  mind  scatters  golden  seeds 
of  deep  wisdom  of  life  and  of  pure  human  love — Karataiev  teaches  Pierre  to 
yieltf  submissively  to  Providence  that  sends  good  or  bad  fortune  according  to 
heavenly  counsel.     Karataiev  is  the  embodiment  of  the  principle  of  love  of 
one's  neighbor.    Ajft^erHis^moral^  regeneration ''  Pierre  partakes  again  of  the 
highest  earthly  happiness.     Natasha  becomes  his  wife,  and  in  the  last  part  of 
the  work   Tolstoi  gives   us  glimpses  of  their  happy  family  life.     The  sister 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  ;]5 

of  Andrei  Bolkonski,  the  much  tried  Princess  Marie,  marries  the  good,  honest, 
even  though  very  ordinary  Rostov ;  and  the  picture  of  these  two  young  fami- 
lies form  a  significant  peaceful  epilogue  to  the  stirring  times  of  war. 

'■  Anna  Karenina." 

The  composition  of  "  Anna  Karenina  "  is  as  rich  in  episodes  as  "  War 
and  Peace,"  but  it  deals  exclusively  with  contemporaneous  family  and  country 
life.  Here  also  the  novel  Js^_composed  of  several  interwoven  plots,  but,  as 
alwgvs_in  Tolstoi,  it-  iq' pytrpn^ply  simple  with  regard  to  external__incident^ 
Anna  Karenina,  the  wife  of  a  high-placed  official  in  Moscow,  is  seized  with 
an  irresistible  love  for  a  j'oung  brilliant  officer,  Alexei  Vronski.  She  be- 
comes faithless  to  her  husband,  discards  all  social  and  practical  considera- 
tions, leaves  her  family  and  yields  herself  entirely  to  her  passion,  tasting 
unrestrainedly  all  the  delights  of  her  mad  intoxication.  When  she  awakens 
to  sober  judgment,  she  becomes  conscious  of  the  horrible  reality  of  her 
conduct  and  commits  suicide.  The  other  important  episode  running  through 
the  story  is  that  of  the  love,  marriage  and  family  life  of  the  landed  proprietor, 
Konstantine  Levin,  and  of  Kitty  Shcherbatski.  The  thread  of  connection  of 
these  with  the  other  chief  characters  of  the  work  is  in  their  family  relation- 
ship. Stepan  Oblonski  and  his  wife  Daria,  an  unhappy  family  held  together 
by  merely  ties  of  convention,  are  the  brother  and  sister  respectively  of  Anna 
Karenina  and  Kitty   Shcherbatski. 

"  Anna  Karenina  "  is  purely  a  novel,  and  a  Russian  novel,  but  it  is  not 
a  novel  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word;  there  is,  so  to  speak,  no  story. 
It  is  not  the  development  of  a  certain  plot,  with  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  a 
end ;  it  is  rather  a  succession  of  pictures,  of  scenes,  some  of  which  seem 
hardly  to  have  any  connection  with  the  principal  scenes.  Such  is  Tolstoi's 
manner,  so  far  as  he  has  a  manner.  He  paints  life  such  as  it  is,  sometimes 
solemn  and  sometimes  dull ;  tragical  and  commonplace — light  and  shadow 
constantly  intermingled. 

We  have  in  "  Anna  Karenina  "  two  couples.  One  is  Levin  and  his  wife 
Kitty,  who  married  for  love,  and  the  husband  remains  a  lover.  Kitty  is  very 
charming,  very  feminine  and  pure ;  Levin  is  very  good,  very  ordinary,  very 
weak,  jealous  when  he  had  not  the  slightest  occasion  to  be  jealous.  He  is 
an  honest  gentleman-farmer,  timid,  awkward;  he  detests  St.  Petersburg  and 
society,  he  is  fond  of  his  country-house,  his  peasants,  his  dogs,  his  horses. 
He  writes  a  book  on  agriculture  which  he  will  never  finish.  He  is  a  warm 
friend,  a  good  neighbor,  a  capital  shot.  Tolstoi  makes  you  positively  see 
him,  and  you  feel  at  the  end  of  the  book  as  if  you  had  always  known  him, 
and  gone  with  him  after  woodcock  and  heard  him  and  Kitty  discuss  small 
domestic  matters.  They  are  happy,  and  their  troubles  are  only  like  the  small 
clouds  that  float  a  moment  in  a  summer's  sky  and  are  soon  absorbed  by  the 
warm  rays  of  the  sun. 

It  is  not  so  with  Anna   Karenina.     She  is  lawless.     She  is  one  of  the 


■AC 


TOLSTOI: 


born  rebels  of  the  world.  She  admires,  she  even  likes  her  husband — she  can 
not  love  him ;  and  she  loves  another  man,  a  handsome,  spirited,  fashionable 
young  officer  named  Vronski.  Fatality  draws  her  to  him,  and  he  belongs 
to  that  class  of  men  who  may  be  said  to  recognize  no  duties  except  to 
themselves,  no  obedience  except  to  their  own  desires  and  passions.  He  is  a  man 
without  a  conscience.  He  is  not  exactly  the  bold  villain,  the  bandit,  the 
outlaw,  who  has  long  been  made  prominent  in  literature.  He  is  the  correct 
man  of  the  world  who  pays  his  gambling  debts  at  the  appointed  time;  he  is  a 
brave,  even  a  brilliant  soldier,  an  accomplished  courtier,  but  his  code  of  morals 
is  not  inspired  by  any  high  law.  He  is  eminently  and  essentially  selfish,  and 
knows  no  God  but  his  own  will. 

Anna  Karenina  is  above  him;  she  has  a  soul;  she  can  feel  commiseration 
and  pity.  She  was  made  for  good,  not  for  evil ;  but  her  fate  has  tied  her  to  a 
husband  who  does  not  satisfy  the  cravings  of  her  imagination  and  of  her 
heart.  She  falls  into  the  hands  of  Vronski  like  a  bird  fascinated  by  a  serpent. 
When  she  feels  her.self,  to  her  surprise  and  almost  to  her  horror,  in  love,  she 
tries  to  escape,  but  is  drawn  by  degress  into  the  vortex  of  passion.  She  has 
the  Slavic  impetuosity  and  the  Slavic  weakness.  As  soon  as  Anna  has  sinned 
the  expiation  begins.  She  begins  almost  at  once  to  hate  the  cause  of  her  sin. 
No  outline  can  convey  the  powerful  impression  of  her  great  personality, 
a  personality  colored  by  the  various  mental  states  through  which  she  passes, 
dawning  love,  blind  passion,  materna[  tenderness,  doubt,  apprehension,  defi- 
ance, sorrowpand  finally  despair..  The  whole  of  a  passionate  woman's  heart  is 
laid  bare.  The  realism  of  Anna  Karenina  is  supreme  and  merciless.  Its 
fidelity  to  the  life  it  depicts,  its  strong  delineation  of  character,  above  all  its 
masterly  treatment  of  a  theme  of  world-wide  interest  places  it  among  the 
leading  novels  of  the  century. 

It  was  first  published  as  a  serial  in  the  Russian  Contemporary,  an  English 
translation  appearing  in  1886,  and  instantly  creating  an  enthusiasm. 

"Memories:  Childhood,  Boyhood,  Youth." 


"  Memories :  Childhood,  Boyhood,  Youth,"  is  the  story  of  the  mental  and 
moral  development  of  a  boy  between  the  ages  of  9  and  18.  It  consists  en- 
tirely of  recollections  but  not  exclusively  of  his  own  life.  Simple,  unpretend- 
ing pictures  from  the  life  of  a  noble  family  in  the  country  are  presented. 
Brothers,  sisters,  parents,  governess,  teachers,  servants  are  all  introduced 
briefly  characterized,  and  their  relations  to  one  another  distinctly  brought 
out — never  through  direct  narrative,  but  incidentally  through  the  natural 
progress  of  the  story.  The  history  of  the  inner  life  of  the  boy  is  revealed  with 
close  and  delicate  minuteness.  First  love,  study,  friendships,  fancies,  inclina- 
tions and  dislikes — nothing  is  deemed  too  imimportant  to  make  the  picture 
complete.  The  speculative  tendency  of  the  author  comes  out  as  unmistakably 
in  this,  his  first  work,  as  does  his  artistic  power  of  observation  and  repre- 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  37 

sentation.  Under  the  influence  of  a  gifted  friend  the  young  boy  becomes 
absorbed  in  a  question  of  abstract  morality — the  question  of  goodness  and 
moral  perfection,  and  he  creates  a  world  of  thoughts,  wishes  and  aims  quite 
different  from  the  world  around  him. 

"  The  Caucasian  Stories." 

With  the  Caucasian  stories  begin  those  marvelous  descriptions  of  war 
which  culminate  and  find  their  highest  expression  in  "  War  and  Peace,"  and 
still  stand  unrivaled  as  the  best  productions  of  the  kind  in  the  world's  litera- 
ture. The  Caucasian  stories  include  "  The  Invaders,"  "  The  Wood-Cutting 
Expedition,"  "  An  Old  Acquaintance,"  "  The  Cossacks  "  and  "  Snowstorm." 

The  chief  of  the  Caucasian  stories  is  "  The  Cossacks,"  the  composition 
of  which  extended  over  a  period  of  several  years.  The  bare  plot  is  so  simple 
as  to  appear  almost  insignificant.  Olenin,  a  young  nobleman  of  the  select 
St.  Petersburg  society,  comes  to  the  Caucasus,  falls  in  love  with  the  beautiful 
Cossack  girl  Alarianka  and  wishes  to  marry  her.  She  seems  inclined  to  accept 
him,  but  in  the  mean  time,  Lukashka,  a  young  spirited  Cossack  lad,  to  whom 
she  had  been  engaged  before,  is  accidentally  wounded.  This  makes  clear  to 
her  how  strong  a  love  she  bears  him.  She  rejects  Olenin  and  he  leaves  the 
village  and  its  wild  inhabitants  wuth  their  aboriginal  life,  their  natural  loves 
and  passions,  under  the  spell  of  which  he  had  fallen  for  a  time,  and  returns 
to  the  camp. 

In  "  Snow  storm  "  Tolstoi  depicts  a  sleigh-ridc  through  an  endless  white 
plain  in  the  territory  of  the  Don  Cossacs,  while  the  snow  falls  incessantly,  and 
drifting  into  the  air,  is  changed  into  a  restless,  wildly  wriggling  mass.  It  is 
a  study  in  simple  phraseology  of  the  violent  play  of  nature. 

"  The  Crimean  Stories." 

More  important  than  the  Caucasian  stories  of  war  are  the  Crimean 
stories:  "Sevastopol  in  December,  1854;  Sevastopol  in  May,  1855,  and  Sevas- 
topol in  August,  1855,  an  Epic  Triology  in  Miniature."  Forwarded  from  the 
scene  of  action  and  published  in  Russia,  they  at  once  earned  Tolstoi  a  literary 
celebrity.  They  are  simple  portrayals  of  battles,  not  the  din,  the  uproar  and 
the  large,  general  effects  of  war,  but  plain,  life-like  presentations  of  the  be- 
havior of  men  under  fire,  revealing  a  remarkable  mastery  of  every  detail  of 
warfare,  and  a  rare  psychologic  understanding  of  the  workings  of  the  human 
spirit  in  extraordinary  moments  of  impending  danger. 

Other  Works. 

'■  A  Morning  in  the  Life  of  a  Landed  Proprietor  "  paints  Tolstoi's  first 
experiences  in  his  attempt  at  the  improvement  of  the  peasantry.  Nekhludov, 
an  energetic,  highly  educated  aristocrat,  desiring  to  introduce  reforms  for 
the  amelioration  of  his  peasants,  visits  their  homes  one  Sunday  in  June,  with 
the  object  of  gathering  information  as  to  their  needs.     To  his  great  disap- 


38  TOLSTOI- 

poiiilmciU  lie  finds  liiinself  obstructed  by  the  very  people  whom  he  had  come 
to  benefit.  The  peasants  do  not  understand  him,  do  not  want  to  be  helped,  and 
show  no  need  for  the  civilization  which  Nekhludov'  desires  to  introduce  among 
them. 

With  "  Notes  of  a  Marker  "  and  "  The  Two  Hussars  "  Tolstoi  enters 
the  field  of  the  free  story.  He  no  longer  confines  himself  to  his  own  experi- 
ences and  reminiscences,  but  the  truth  and  reality  of  the  presentation  remain 
as  marked  as  before.  "  Notes  of  a  Marker  "  depicts  the  ruin  of  a  youth  in  the 
thoughtless,  corrupt,  idle  life  of  high  society. 

In  "  The  Two  Hu.-^.sars  "  the  heroes  belong  to  the  same  family  but  to 
different  generations.  They  pass  through  the  same  experiences  of  love, 
enmity,  folly,  but  each  in  quite  a  different  fashion.  In  older  Russia  all  is 
large,  open,  bold;  in  younger,  small,  concealed  and  artful. 

"  Albert "  is  the  story  of  a  starved  musician  w^honi  Tolstoi  once  took 
with  him  to  the  country. 

"  Lucerne  "  is  an  episode  from  Tolstoi's  travels  in  Switzerland.  A  poor 
wandering  minstrel  enters  the  Sweizerhof  Hotel  in  Lucerne  one  evening  and 
sings  for  its  rich,  fashionable  inmates.  They  seem  to  enjoy  his  performance, 
but  no  one  offers  him  the  scantiest  reward.  This  arouses  the  sympathy  of 
Nekhludov.  the  narrator,  and  one  of  the  guests  at  the  hotel  that  evening. 
He  befriends  the  simple,  gifted  singer,  and  invites  him  to  sit  down  with  him  to 
a  bottle  of  champagne.  Although  the  singer's  manners  are  irreproachable,  this 
simple  act  of  kindness  draws  upon  Nekhludov  the  ridicule  of  the  fashionable 
guests,  w'ho  even  begin  to  suspect  his  sanity. 

In  "  Three  Deaths "  Tolstoi  treats  the  theme  of  the  different  manner 
in  which  beings  on  various  scales  of  existence  are  affected  by  death.  The 
higher  the  culture,  the  more  painful  is  death.  The  peasant  accepts  death 
quietly  and  resignedly,  as  the  rest  of  life.  The  noble  lady  suft'crs  the  torments 
of  death  years  before  the  real  death  comes.  Her  very  life  had  long  since 
become  a  virtual  death.  But  the  mighty  oak  struck  by  the  axe  of  the  woods- 
man trembles  in  all  its  frame,  and  with  one  loud  groan  totters  to  the  ground. 

'■  Family  Happiness  "  is  Tolstoi's  first  story  of  love.  It  follows  no  model 
and  is  as  original  in  conception  as  his  other  works.  The  personal  element 
is  evident,  and  in  describing  the  love  sentiment  through  the  female  character 
he  probably  gives  expression  to  his  own  feeling.  But  he  is  a  matured  man. 
He  foresees  the  course  of  events.  She  is  young  and  beautiful.  She  will  love 
and  seek  for  that  life  which  to  him  appears  so  meaningless  and  hollow.  Then 
in  heavy,  troubled  nights,  he  will  again  find  himself  alone — a  loneliness  far 
worse  than  he  had  known  before  he  found  her.  And  even  if  she  returns  to 
him  again,  perhaps  tainted  with  guilt — the  man  can  not  keep  at  a  stand- 
still. Every  year  of  his  life  presents  new  problems  to  him.  He  has  new 
interests,  he  becomes  another  man,  he  can  not  go  back.  She  will  want  to 
return  to  the  (jld,  the  first  intoxication  of  love,  which  is  only  a  point  of 
transition.  The  rich  friendship  of  mature  growth  will  not  satisfy  her,  and 
for  him  it  is  a  necessity,  a  natural  condition  of  life. 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  39 

"  Polikushka  "  is  the  story  of  a  poor  servant  who  through  the  influence 
of  bad  company  had  become  addicted  to  habits  of  stealing  and  drunkenness, 
without,  however,  losing  the  better  sides  of  his  character — his  industry  and 
good  nature.  He  has  a  wife  and  five  children.  For  the  last  seven  months  he 
has  .shown  signs  of  improvement  and  given  no  cause  for  complaint.  His 
mistress  is  interested  in  his  well-being,  and  in  order  to  restore  in  him  a 
sense  of  self-esteem  entrusts  him  with  the  collection  of  a  considerable  sum 
of  money.  Polikushka  is  proud  of  his  errand  and  promises  his  wife  to  carry 
it  out  with  scrupulous  exactness,  without  yielding  to  temptation.  On  the 
way  back  he  loses  the  money,  returns  home,  answers  his  wife's  questions 
moodily  at'.d  brokenly,  and  then  walks  up  to  the  garret  and  hangs  himself  on 
a  beam.  A  neighbor  sees  his  body  and  informs  the  wife  of  the  accident. 
Leaving  the  child  she  has  been  bathing  in  the  tub  of  water,  she  rushes  madly 
up  the  stairway,  where  she  drops  down  unconscious.  On  recovering,  she 
finds  the  child  drowned.  Overcome  by  the  fearful  catastrophe  she  becomes 
demented  and  laughs  and  talks  continuously.  The  village  folk  who  were 
preparing  to  celebrate  a  holiday  with  music  and  dancing,  crowd  eagerly  around 
the  scene  of  accident  and  add  to  the  general  confusion. 

The  tragedy  is  enhanced  by  the  ironic  commentary  of  the  accompanying 
plot.  The  nephew  of  Dutlov,  an  old  miser,  is  recruited  for  military  service  in 
place  of  Polikushka.  whose  choice  had  been  benevolently  hindered  by  the 
landlady  to  prevent  his  separation  from  wife  and  children.  Dutlov  might 
redcemhis  nephew  with  three  hundred  rubles.  This  he  refuses  to  do,  and"  there 
is  a  violent  scene  between  the  uncle  and  the  nephew  at  the  moment  of  parting. 
The  nephew  calls  the  old  man  a  robber  and  a  vampire,  and  has  forcibly  to 
be  kept  from  attacking  him.  As  Dutlov  returns  to  the  village  he  finds  the 
money  Polikushka  had  lost  and  brings  it  to  the  proprietress.  But  she,  not 
yet  recovered  from  the  shock  of  the  tragedy  in  her  household,  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  ill-fated  money.  As  Dutlov  returns  home  he  sees 
the  dead  body  of  Polikushka  hanging  from  the  beam.  He  has  a  terrible 
dream  that  night,  springs  up  from  his  bed,  hurries  after  his  nephew,  whom 
he  succeeds  in  overtaking,  and  with  the  found  money  furnishes  a  substitute 
for  him.  Thus  w-hat  had  brought  disaster  to  one  family,  where,  whatever  the 
temporary  mistakes  of  the  father,  a  general  spirit  of  kindliness  and  gentleness 
pervaded,  became  the  cause  of  the  restoration  of  peace  and  happiness  to 
another,  whose  ruin  had  been  threatened  by  the  niggardliness,  stubbornness 
and  hard-heartedness  of  its  cliief.j( ' 

"  Kholstomier  "  is  the  story  of  a  horse  of  noble  stock  that  had  once  been 


the  favorite  of  his  master,  but  is  now  old  and  decayed  and  abandoned,  and 
of  the  sport  of  his  young,  fresh,  frisky  and  coddled  companions  in  whose 
midst  he  had  been  placed  to  drag  out  his  useless  and  wretched  existence.  At 
last  Kholstomier,  the  horse,  determines  to  tell  them  his  history  and  prove 
to  them  he  had  j^nce  not  been  worse  than  they,  and  that  the  same  fate 
awaited  them  in  the  end.     He  had  always  been  a  possession,  always  in  the 


40  TOLSTOI: 

power  of  another.  He  explains  the  conception  of  property  and  comes  to  thp 
conclusion  that  the  horse  stands  above  men,  for  while  the  life  of  the  former 
is  based  on  action,  man's  activity  manifests  itself  merely  in  words.  Such 
words  are  in  the  first  place  all  those  which  bear  reference  to  property^  He 
who  can  apply  the  word  "  mine  "  to  the  greatest  number  of  things  is  regarded 
by  men  as  the  most  fortunate.  He  says/^X^Hiy  this  is  so,  I  can  not  tell,  but  it 
is  so.  At  first  I  was  at  pains  to  explain  this  on  account  of  some  special  ad 
vantage,  but  it  soon  appeared  that  this  was  false.  Many  of  the  people,  foi 
instance,  who  called  me  their  horse,  did  not  ride  me,  others  rode  me.  '  They 
did  not  feed  me,  others  fed  me.  Kindness  was  shown  me,  not  by  those  who 
called  me  their  horse,  but  by  the  coachman,  horse-doctors,  and  in  general, 
strangers.  Later,  as  the  sphere  of  my  observations  extended,  I  convinced 
myself  that  it  is  not  only  with  reference  to  the  horse  that  the  conception 
mine  has  no  other  basis  than  the  low  and  animal  instinct  of  men,  which 
they  call  the  sense  of  property  or  the  right  of  property.  The  man  says,  '  The 
house  is  mine,'  and  does  not  live  in  it.  He  is  only  concerned  about  its  con- 
struction and  its  preservation.  There  are  men  who  call  a  piece  of  land  '  mine  ' 
and  have  never  seen  this  land,  and  have  never  walked  upon  it.  There  are 
men  who  call  other  men  '  mine '  and  have  never  seen  these  men,  and  all 
their  relations  to  these  men  consist  in  their  doing  harm  to  them.  And  men 
in  their  life  do  not  strive  to  do  that  which  they  regard  as  good,  but  to  call 
as  many  things  as  possible  theirs.  I  am  now  convinced  that  in  this  consists 
the  essential  difiference  between  men  and  us  hoijscs.'^ 

Kholstomier  is  bought  by  a  prince,  and  he  is  proud  of  having  so  dis- 
tinguished a  master  and  of  driving  him  to  his  mistress.  One  day  the  prince 
learns  that  his  mistress  has  abandoned  him.  He  pursues  her  with  Kholstomier, 
running  him  so  unreasonably  that  the  horse  becomes  permanently  crippled  and 
enfeebled.  He  then  passes  on  from  one  master  to  another,  sinking  lower  and 
lower,  until  he  reaches  the  condition  described  at  the  opening  of  this  story. 
The  prince  is  met  with  again  in  the  story  as  a  ruined  man,  partly  dependent  on 
the  charitable  support  of  a  rich  friend.  A  merciful  stroke  of  the  flayer  at  last 
relieves  the  horse  from  his  miserable  position,  while  the  man  is  allowed  to  rot 
away  alive. 

Period  tJ-rTi^T^' 'PoT]}    Literary  and  Ethico°5ociological  Writings. 

Literary   Writings. 

"Death  of  Ivan  Ilich "    (1885). 
"Power  of  Darkness"   (1887).  a  drama. 
"Kreutzer  Sonata"  (1888). 

"The  First  Brewer"  (1888).  a  drama. 
"Master  and  Workman"   (1895). 
"Resurrection"  (1900). 
"Who  Is  Right?"   (1901). 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  41 

"  Resurrection,"  a  later  novel,  indicates  by  its  very  title  Tolstoi's  radical 
departure  from  his  former  method  in  his  works  of  fiction.  It  is  true  that  few 
of  Tolstoi's  compositions  are  purely  works  of  art,  that  the  didactic  element 
is  present  in  most  of  them,  and  is  particularly  conspicuous  in  "  War  and 
Peace "  and  "  Anna  Karenina."  In  all  these,  however,  the  ethical  and 
philosophical  themes  of  Tolstoi  are  for  the  most  part  merely  supplementary. 
They  do  not  enter  organically  into  the  works  themselves,  and  can  easily  be 
distinguished  from  them.  In  "  Resurrection,"  on  the  contrary,  the  artist  is 
altogether  discarded  and  the  philosopher  and  moralist  are  allowed  to  hold 
the  ground  undisputed.  If,  in  spite  of  all  this,  the  artistic  quality  is  evident 
throughout  the  work,  and  now  and  then  rises  to  a  height  little  if  at  all 
beneath  the  best  in  "  War  and  Peace  "  and  "  Anna  Karenina,"  it  is  because 
Tolstoi,  being  naturally  an  artist,  his  creations  spontaneously  and  unwittingly 
assume  the  artistic  form. 

The  story  is  briefly  this:  The  hero,  a  Russian  nobleman,  has  in  his 
youth  betrayed  a  young  woman  of  humble  rank,  a  dependent  on  his  family. 
When  the  story  opens,  ten  years  have  elapsed.  She  has  been  driven  to  a 
life  of  shame;  he  has  had  the  reckless  career  of  the  average  officer  and  man 
of  the  world.  One  day  he  finds  himself  summoned  to  serve  on  a  jury,  and 
there  he  meets  once  more  the  woman  whom  he  has  wronged.  She  is  accused  of 
poisoning,  and  her  case  is  one  of  those  which  he  is  required  to  consider. 
She  is  not  guilty,  yet  she  is  convicted,  partly  through  her  own  ignorance 
of  the  forms  of  law.  and  sentenced  to  exile.  His  nature  is  profoundly  stirred 
by  these  happenings,  for  he  is  now  old  enough  to  take  a  serious  view  of  life, 
and  the  predisposiiion  to  do  so  is  not  lacking.  As  he  reviews  his  career  his 
better  self  is  awakened,  and  this  is  the  "  resurrection  "  to  which  the  title  has 
reference.  In  making  us  understand  the  workings  of  this*  man's  mind,  at  this 
particular  juncture,  the  author  displays  his  highest  powers,  and  gives  us  a 
piece  of  psychological  analysis  which  has  rarely  been  equaled.  The  upshot 
of  it  is  that  he  determines  as  far  as  possible  to  atone  for  his  crime  by  making 
the  convict  his  wife  and  sharing  her  banishment  to  Siberia.  But  he  pleads 
his  cause  with  her  in  vain,  for  her  soul  is  also  experiencing  a  sort  of  "  resur- 
rection/' and  she  will  not  accept  what  she  can  not  consider  other  than  a 
sacrifice.  He  persists,  however,  in  making  the  journey  to  Siberia  and  in 
doing  what  he  can  to  ameliorate  her  condition.  Eventually  his  eflforts  secure 
a  commutation  of  her  sentence,  and  she  marries  a  fellow-prisoner. 

"  The  Death  of  Ivan  Ilich  "  is  a  powerful  psychologic  study  in  which  is 
depicted  the  slow,  gradual  and  painful  death  in  consequence  of  a  seemingly 
slight  injury  to  the  once  fresh  and  life-loving  Ilich. 

"  Kreuizer  Sonata  "  is  the  story  of  a  hasty  love  and  marriage  and  its 
tragical  consequences.  Rozdnyschev  becomes  suspicious  of  his  wife  and  kills 
her  in  a  paroxysm  of  jealousy.  The  work  is  not  only  an  arraignment  of  the 
present  status  of  the  family,  but  seems  to  be  a  plea  against  the  union  of 
man  and  woman  in  general  and  for  the  extinction  of  the  human  race. 


49  TOLSTOI: 

"  Master  and  Workman  "  embodies  the  antiqne  teaching  of  the  vanity  of 
riches.  A  timber-merchant — rough,  coarse,  and  hard-hearted — goes  to  the 
forest  with  his  man.  loses  his  way  and  is  caught  in  a  snow-storm.  He  un- 
harnesses the  horse,  mounts  it.  and  rides  away,  leaving  his  humble  companion 
to  his  fate.  The  horse,  failing  to  find  its  way  through  the  tempest,  brings 
him  back  to  the  sledge  on  which  the  workman  is  huddled,  already  stiff  with 
cold,  and  half-buried  in  the  snow.  With  a  rush,  the  usele^sness  of  the 
cowardly  attempt  he  has  just  made  to  save  his  own  life,  and  the  vanity  of  all 
his  past  efforts  to  accumulate  riches,  which  at  such  a  moment  have  lost  all 
value  in  his  eyes,  surge  over  the  merchant's  soul,  sweep  away  the  artificial 
layer  of  selfishnes.«-,  and  stir  his  underlying  instinct  of  altruism  and  sympathy 
for  his  neighbor.  His  sole  idea  now  is  to  bring  back  warmth,  with  his  fur 
coat  and  w'ith  his  own  body  to  the  poor  wretch  to  whom  he  had  not  given  a 
thought  a  little  while  ago.  He  stretches  himself  upon  his  body,  and  there,  a 
few  hours  later,  he  is  found  in  the  same  posture;  he  has  brought  his  last 
undertaking  to  a  successful  issue.  Death  has  come  to  him,  indeed,  but  the 
W'Orkman  is  alive. 

The  plot  of  Tolstoi's  last  novel,  "  Who  is  Right?  "  is  as  follows:  Vladimir 
Ivanovitch  Spessivtzer,  who  is  employed  at  the  Ministry  of  Agriculture,  has 
been  spending  some  time  abroad  with  his  wife,  Maria  Nikolaievna,  and  his 
sixteen-year-old  daughter  Vera.  In  the  autumn  they  return  to  Russia,  and  on 
the  way  to  St.  Petersburg  visit  a  brother-in-law,  Anatol  Dimitrivitch  Lishchin. 
who  is  a  district  president  in  one  of  the  governments  which  have  greatly 
suffered  from  bad  harvests.  The  first  conversation  among  the  relatives  does 
not  prove  altogether  agreeable.  The  liberalism  of  the  sixties  is  touched  on 
superficially.  Lischin  feels  insulted  at  the  self-conscious,  incautious  tone  of 
Spessivtzer,  and  this  meeting  places  their  by  no  means  friendly  relations  in 
a  very  glaring  light.  During  this  time  a  conversation  is  being  carried  on  in 
the  bedroom  between  the  ladies,  while  in  the  nursery  the  eldest  scion  of  the 
Lishchin  family  is  enchanted  with  his  cou'^in  Verc.  a  girl  full  of  life,  with 
.sparkling  eyes  and  beautiful  teeth.  A  neighbor,  a  prince,  is  expected  for  a 
shooting-party  which  has  been  arranged  for  the  morrow.  During  dinner  ho 
appears,  and  every  endeavor  is  made  to  be  pleasant  to  him.  The  next  morn- 
ing they  set  off  on  slippery  roads  for  the  shooting.  On  the  way  a  conversa- 
tion springs  up  about  the  conditions  under  which  the  peasant  population  lives, 
about  bad  harvests,  and  the  organization  of  relief.  Vera,  who  is  accustomed 
to  having  attention  paid  to  her  on  all  sides,  feels  bored,  the  conversation  does 
not  interest  her.  Only  when  she  hears  that  it  is  intended  to  organize  help 
for  the  suffering  peasantry,  and  that  she  can  take  part  in  it,  does  she  become 
lively  again.  She  finally  receives  permission  to  remain  three  weeks  with  the 
Lishchins.  At  the  end  of  three  weeks,  when  her  old  nurse  comes  to  take 
her,  she  will  not  return  home.  In  consequence,  there  is  a  scene  at  home  be- 
tween the  parents,  and  the  father  tries  to  bring  his  influence  to  bear  on  his 
daughter,  but  in  vain.     It  appear"^  that  Vcra's  feelings  and  views — her  whole 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  43 

nature,  in  .-hort — have  undergone  a  radical  change.  She  refuses  to  leave 
people  among  whom  she  has  an  opportunity  to  work  for  the  good  of  her 
neighbor,  and  where  she  can  prove  herself  to  be  a  useful  member  of  human 
society.  Moreover,  she  repudiates  the  idea  of  returning  to  surroundings 
where  she  would  be  condemned  to  idle  inaction  and  a  mere  vegetative 
existence. 

Ethico^Sociologicai  Writings. 

"  What  is  Happiness?  "  (1882). 
"What  Shall  We  Do  Then?"  (1884-5). 
"  My  Confessions  "  (1889). 
"What  I  Believe"  (1892). 

"The  Kingdom  of  God  is  Within  You"    (1S93). 
"Politics  and  Religion"   (1894). 
"Christianity  and  Patriotism"    (1895). 
"Letters  to  a  Pole"  (1896). 
"  War  and  Peace  "  (1896). 
"What  is  Art?"  .( 1 898) . 
"  slavery  of  our  Times''  (1000). 
"My  Reply  to  the  Holy  Synod"   (1901). 
"The  Czar  and  His  Ministers"  (1901). 

The  pith  of  these  foregoing  works  is  found  in  the  chapter  called  "  Tol- 
stoi's Philosophy." 

^njFE^F   LEO  NIKOLAEVICH   TOLSTOL         ^"^  f)  '^*7'    /^ 

Leo  Nikolaevich  Tolstoi  was  born  August  28  (new  style  September  9), 
1828,  on  the  estate  of  Lisnaia  Poliana,  in  the  government  of  Tula.  He  is  a  de- 
scendant of  an  ancient  stock,  one  of  his  ancestors  in  the  sixth  generation, 
Peter  Andreevich  Tolstoi,  having  obtained  the  title  of  count  through  dis- 
tinguished service  under  Peter  the  Great.  Leo  was  the  youngest  male  member 
of  a  family  of  four  sons^pd  one  daughter.  His  mother,  who  belonged  to 
the  princely  family  of  theyVolkenskis^died  a  yenr  and  a  half  after  his  birth. 
At  the  age  of  nine,  he  also  lost  his  father. 

lasnaia  Poliana  is  a  simple  and  essentially  unattractive  country-place; 
but  the  close  intimacj^  with  nature  in  which  Tolstoi's  earliest  boyhood  was 
spent,  the  atmosphere  of  country  life  and  near  contact  with  the  peasant  popu- 
lace must  have  impressed  themselves  strongly  on  his  boyish  susceptibility  and 
doubtless  lent  permanent  color  to  his  manner  of  viewing  life  in  general. 

In  the  year  1837,  the  children  of  the  Tolstoi  family,  left  without  parents, 
were  entrusted  to  the  care  of  two  sisters  of  the  father  and  a  distant  family 
relation.  Tolstoi  first  learned  to  know  the  cily  on  entering  the  school  of 
Kazan  in  1843.  The  conditions  then  prevailing  in  the  management  of  the 
school  were  not  of  a  kind  calculated  to  inspire  the  young  boy  with  respect 
either  for  the  science  or  the  honesty  of  its  administrators.    He  chose  a  course 


44  TOLSTOI: 

in  Oriental  languages,  but  ihe  indecision  and  restlessness  which  mark  his  early 
career  did  not  permit  him  to  devote  himself  systematically  to  any  single 
subject  of  study.  He  turned  to  history  and  law,  and  even  dabbled  in  mathe- 
matics, failed  signally  in  a  number  of  his  examinations,  and  at  the  end  ut 
three  years  returned  to  lasnaia  Poliana  without  having  been  graduated. 

The  estate  of  lasnaia  Poliana  was  badly  managed  at  the  time,  and  young 
Tolstoi,  already  fired  with  ideas  for  the  improvement  of  the  condition  of  the 
j  peasantry,  set  about  at  once  introducing  reforms  which  he  thought  would 
'^  prove  conducive  to  the  improvement  of  the  serfs  and  the  land.  He  warded 
to  build  better  houses  and  lightgri  the_}ahnr  of  his  men  by  machinery.  But 
his  first  experiment  was  doomed  to  disappointment.  He  was  hampered  at 
every  step  by  the  ignorance,  the  obstinacy  and  the  mistrust  of  the  people. 
Instead  of  being  welcomed  as  a  friend,  he  was  looked  on  with  suspicion. 

Losing  all  patience,  he  left  in  the  fall  of  1847  for  St.  Petersburg  and 
there  attempted  to  complete  the  course  in  criminal  law  which  he  had  begun 
at  Kazan.  But  his  good  resolution  melted  away  with  the  thawing  of  the  ice 
and  snow.  He  returned  again  to  lasnaia  Poliana  in  the  spring  and  soon  after 
went  to  Moscow.  Plere  he  threw  himself  precipitately  with  all  the  ardor  of  a 
vigorous  and  passionate  nature,  into  the  pleasures  which  the  high  society 
of  the  ancient  metropolis  offered.  He  gambled,  drank,  dissipated,  tasted  deep 
of  all  the  "  enjoyments  of  vice,"  as  he  later  called  them.  Years  afterward, 
when  he  had  promised  never  to  touch  a  card  again,  he  lost  a  sum  which  he 
had  not  the  means  to  pay.  From  this  difficulty  he  was  extricated  by  the  unex- 
pected receipt  the  next  day  of  the  honorarium  for  his  "  Cossacks,"  all  of 
which  went  in  payment  of  the  loss,  but  he  seems  after  this  never  to  have 
played  again. 

Weary  of  the  ceaseless  round  of  pleasures,  Tolstoi  at  length  determined 
to  tear  himself  away  from  his  old  acquaintances  and  surroundings  and  tempta- 
tions. With  his  brother  Nikolai,  he  went  in  185 1  to  the  Caucasus.  Here  he 
was  deeply  impressed  and  delighted  with  the  grand  picturesqueness  of  the 
natural  scenery,  and  with  the  unhampered  vigorous  life  of  the  primitive 
native  tribes.  In  order  to  be  able  to  continue  his  stay  in  that  region,  he  was 
persuaded  to  enter  military  service.  At  that  time  there  existed  a  state  of  war 
between  the  Russians  and  the  wild  mountain  tribes.  He  took  part  in  the 
various  expeditions  and  had  a  narrow  escape  from  Tartar  captivity. 

The  peasants  whom  he  had  hitherto  known  only  in  their  peaceful  agri- 
cullural  life,  he  now  met  as  soldiers,  and  there  gained  that  deep  and  close 
insight  into  the  workings  of  the  human  soul  under  the  most  varied  circum- 
stances that  so  strikingly  manifests  itself  in  all  his  works.  While  himself  under 
fire,  he  made  minute  observations  of  the  fighting  people  around  him.  It  was 
during  his  sojourn  in  the  Caucasus  that  he  began  the  writing  of  his  "  Memo- 
ries: Childhood,  Boyhood,  Youth,"  followed  by  "A  Morning  in  the  Life  of  a 
Landed  Proprietor,"  "  The  Invaders  "  and  "  The  Cossacks." 

In  1853  li^  returned  to  lasnaia  Poliana,  but  immediately  afterward,  on  the 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  45 

t)Utbieak  of  the  Crimean  war,  joined  Prince  Gorcliakov's  staff  and  passed 
llnoiigh  all  the  dangers  and  hardships  of  a  severe  campaign.  He  took  part  in 
the  battle  of  Chernigof  and  in  the  siege  of  Sevastopol.  A  captain  of  artillery 
serving  in  the  same  battery  with  Tolstoi,  gives  the  following  sympathetic 
account  of  Tolstoi  during  the  war : 

"  With  his  descriptions  and  rapidly  improvised  verses,  the  Count  inspired 
ail  and  made  us  forget  the  severest  hardships  of  war.  He  was,  in  the  most 
thorough  sense  of  the  word,  the  soul  of  our  battery.  When  he  was  among 
us  we  scarcely  noticed  how  the  lime  passed;  when  he  was  away  (which  hap- 
pened very  often,  as  he  was  fond  of  taking  little  excursions  to  Simferopol)  we 
all  hung  our  noses.  At  last  he  returned — like  the  prodigal  son — somber,  dis- 
:  pi)oinled,  thinned  down,  at  odds  with  the  whole  world.  Then  he  would 
take  me  aside  and  begin  a  general  confession,  how  extravagantly  he  had  played 
and  how  he  had  been  drinking,  where  he  had  spent  the  days  and  even  the 
nights,  and  so  on.  And  he  worried  and  mortified  himself  on  account  of  his 
depravity,  and  suffered  pangs  of  conscience  as  if  he  had  committed  the  Lord 
knows  what  crimes.  One  couldn't  help  feeling  really  sorry  for  the  fellow. 
Such  a  man  was  he !  In  a  word,  a  peculiar  being !  Honestly  speaking,  I 
could  not  quite  understand  him.  At  any  rate,  he  was  an  excellent  chum,  an 
iionest  soul,  and  had  a  golden  heart.  Whoever  came  near  to  him  had  to  like 
him  and  could  never  forget  him." 

The  immediate  literary  outcome  of  his  experiences  in  the  Crimean  war 
are  the  three  famous  sketches,  "  Sevastopol  in  December,  1854,  in  May  and  in 
August,  1855,"  written  at  leisure  intervals  during  the  war. 

'J'olstoi  left  the*  army  in  1855,  having  greatly  distinguished  himself  as  an 
artillery  officer  in  Sevastopol.  The  knowledge  of  men  and  things  he  had  ac- 
quired in  his  war  experiences,  find  their  fullest  expression  in  his  later  incom- 
parable composition,  "  War  and  Peace."  He  had  encountered  daily  danger 
at  Sevastopol,  had  undergone  all  the  fatigues  and  extremes  of  a  hard  cam- 
paign, observed  the  common  soldiers  as  well  as  the  officers  in  all  situations, 
in  all  moods,  on  the  field  of  battle,  as  well  as  in  the  hospitals  and  in  the  camp. 
At  the  same  time  he  took  note  of  the  conditions  of  life  in  the  besieged  town 
and  of  the  attitude  of  its  inhabitants.  This  familiarity  with  every  aspect  of 
war  became  a  wonderful  instrument  in  his  hands  in  the  writing  of  his 
masterpiece. 

When  Tolstoi  came  to  St.  Petersburg,  he  found  that  his  literary  fame 
had  preceded  him.  He  entered  into  social  connections  with  the  greatest 
writers  of  the  time.  Then  there  lived  in  the  capital  some  of  the  greatest 
talents  which  Russian  literature  has  to  boast  of — Dostoevski,  Turgenev, 
Goucharov,  Grigorovich,  Ostrovski.  All  these  he  now  met,  but  was  particu- 
larly favored  by  Turgenev,  the  greatest  writer  of  Russia  at  the  time,  who 
easily  recognized  the  genius  of  Tolstoi. "  The  latter,  however,  was  but  ill 
at  ease  in  the  society  of  these  great  men.  When  in  the  army,  he  mingled 
freely  with  the  soldiers,  laughed  and  talked  with  them,  and  felt  himself  in 


Hi 


TOLSTOI. 


harmony  with  llic  freedom  and  democracy  of  the  life  tlicre  prevailing. 
Here,  on  tlic  other  hand,  he  found  a  spirit  of  exclusiveness,  an  intellectual 
aloofness  which  displeased  him,  for  his  nature  revolted  against  every  form  of 
aristocracy.  Some  of  their  conversations,  too,  displeased  and  astonished  him. 
lie  could  not  understand  how  any  one  could  grow  honestly  entliusiastic  in  the 
discussion  of  abstract  and  learned  questions,  such  as  the  literature  and  the 
science  of  the  day.  These  eccentricities,  added  to  his  intolerance  of  contra- 
diction, produced  interminable  frictions,  and  led  to  frequent  quarrels,  par- 
ticularly with  Turgcnev.  It  is  little  wonder,  then,  that  he  soon  tired  of  this 
uncongenial  intercourse  with  the  intellectual  fraternity  of  the  capital,  and 
again  left  for  his  estate. 

In  1857  he  visited  England,  France,  Germany,  Belgium,  Switzerland  and 
Italy,  and  later  traveled  again  in  Germany.  While  in  Germany  he  visited 
the  schools,  talked  with  some  of  the  celebrated  educators  and  examined  the 
educational  methods  of  the  country,  with  the  object  of  finding  help  for  his 
contemplated  scheme  of  popular  education  among  the  peasant  children  of  his 
estate. 

Although  disappointed  in  his  search,  he  did  not  desist  from  his  under- 
taking. He  established  a  school  in  lasnaia  Poliana,  conducting  it  on  principles 
radically  different  from  any  system  of  pedagogy  which  had  as  yet  been  prac- 
tically tested.  There  was  an  utter  absence  of  discipline,  no  strict  limitations 
as  to  hours  of  attendance,  no  obligations  as  to  attendance  at  all.  Pupils  were 
allowed  to  sit  wherever  they  pleased,  even  on  the  window-sills,  the  only 
requirement  in  this  re^pect  being  that  the  smaller  ones  should  take  the  nearer 
places  from  where  they  could  see  their  teacher.  Often  the  teacher  was  seen  in 
the  center  and  all  the  scholars  grouped  around  him.  Tolstoi  himself  was  one 
of  the  teachers.  The  institution  prospered  under  his  care,  and  in  the  course  of 
two  years  there  were  twelve  schools  in  the  district. 

In  the  subjects  and  methods  of  education,  the  same  freedom  was  observed 
as  in  external  management.  The  object  was  not  to  force  knowledge  on  un- 
willing minds,  but  to  learn  from  the  inclinations  of  the  taught  what  knowledge 
was  most  congenial  to  them.  In  the  opinion  of  Tolstoi,  only  such  knowledge 
was  of  value.  Hence,  instruction  should  be  made  pleasant.  With  this  view 
Tolstoi  tried  several  experiments  without  success,  until  finally  he  won  the 
Ijeasant  children  over  by  telling  them,  in  his  own  inimitable  way,  stories  from 
tHe jDld-Xestamenti^  They  hung  upon  every  word,  and  usfHilly  cried~fof  "more 
when  he  had  done.  From  the  Old  Testament  he  proceeded  in  the  same  man- 
ner to  Russian  history.  By  small  courses  in  chemistry  and  physics  he  also 
introduced  them  to  nature  study. 

Tolstoi  had  the  gratification  of  seeing  his  eflforts  crowned  with  success. 
The  schoolrooms  began  to  be  visited  also  by  adults.  The  children  learned 
reading  and  writing,  and  sotne  even  displayed  remarkable  imaginative  and 
creative  talent.  Special  text-books  were  prepared  for  the  schools,  some  of 
them  composed  by  the  pupils  themselves.     All  who  had  visited  the  schools, 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  47 

among  them  ^uinc  famous  padagogists,  unanimously  conceded  the  remarkable 
success  of  his  experiment.  In  the  pedagogic  magazine,  which  he  published 
under  the  name  of  lasnaia  Toliaita,  Tolstoi  explained  the  methods  of  his 
schools  and  their  basic  principles.  The  magazine  contains  some  very  valuable 
suggestions  on  national  education.  With  these,  however,  he  intermingles  opin- 
ions on  education  in  general,  on  progress  and  civilization,  which  are  note- 
worthy as  revealing  his  peculiar  position  on  these  subjects,  even  at  that  early 
period.  Progress,  in  his  opinion,  was  useful  only  to  the  leisured  classes;  for 
all  others  it  was  an  evil. 

The  sad  fate  of  his  brother  Nikolai,  who  died  in  his  arms  at  Nice  in 
October,  i860,  after  a  long  period  of  suffering  from  consumption,  left  a  deep 
and  lasting  impression  on  Tolstoi.  The  picture  of  the  going  out  of  life  which 
he  had  witnessed,  remained  with  him  for  a  long  time  and  haunted  him.  The 
admirable  death-scenes  in  his  subsequent  fiction  were  probably  composed  under 
the-  intlucnce  of  this  experience. 

During  the  Crimean  war  appeared  the  trilogy,  "  Sevastopol  in  December 
1854;  in  May,  and  in  August,  1855,"  followed  immediately  by  "The  Wood 
Cutting  Expedition"  C1855).  In  1856  he  published  "Notes  of  a  Marker," 
■"The  Two  Hussars,"  the  "Snowstorm,"  and  "An  Old  Acquaintance;"  in 
1857,  "Lucerne"  and  "Albert;"  in  1859,  "Three  Deaths"  and  "Family 
Happiness;  "  in  i860,  "  Polikushko;  "  in  1861,  "  Kholstomier." 

In  1862,  Tolstoi  married  Sophia  Andreevna  Behrs,  the  daughter  of  a 
physician  in  Moscow,  of  German  descent,  an  early-developed  girl  of  stately 
appearance,  extraordinary  beauty  of  figure  and  very  tall.  Her  delicate  face, 
encircled  with  thick  chestnut-brown  hair  and  animated  with  sparkling  blue 
eyes,  bespoke  spirit  and  intelligence.  She  received  a  good  harmonious  educa- 
tion,  being  neftTTer  a  one-sided  training  in  accomplishments  nor  merely  intel- 
lectual ;  the  imaginative  faculties  and  the  intellect  were  equally  developed. 
She  had  a  knowledge  of  four  languages  and  read  the  masterpieces  of  the 
Russian,  German,  French  and  English  literatures.  This  girl  understood  to 
the  full  the  worth  of  a  man  like  Tolstoi.  She  saw  her  highest  dream  of 
happiness  accomplished  when  the  much  admired  author  declared  his  love  to 
her.  The  circumstances  of  his  declaration  were  precisely  the  same  as  those 
described  in  "  Anna  Karenina  "  between  Levin  and  Kitty.  Tolstoi  and  Sophia 
Bchrs  were  sitting  at  a  card-table  apart  from  the  other  guests  at  a  social  gath- 
ering, when  Levin  took  a  piece  of  chalk  and  traced  the  following  initial  letters' 
on  the  table-cloth:  "  W.  y.  a.  m.  t.  i.  c.  n.  b.  d.  y.  m.  t.  o.  n. ?  "  ("  When  you 
answered  me  then,  '  it  can  not  be,'  did  you  mean  then  or  never?  ")  She  is  said 
to  have  understood  him  immediately  and  answered  in  the  same  manner : 
"  T.  I.  c.  n.  a.  o."  ("  Then,  I  could  not  answer  otherwise.")  He  was  equally 
quick  in  deciphering  her  meaning,  and  thus  they  continued  their  conversation  I 
to  the  end. 

For  the  next  several  years  Tolstoi  gave  himself  up  entirely  to  family  life 
and  to  school  work  and  the  management  of  his  estate.     In  1865  he  began  the 


48  TOLSTOI: 

piil)lication  of  his  greatest  novel,  the  prose  epic,  "  War  and  Peace,"  in  the 
Russian  Messenger,  completed  in  1868.  At  the  same  time,  he  did  not  abandon 
his  educational  activity,  publishing  class-books,  and  inventing  methods  for 
the  easier  conveyance  of  rudimentarj'  knowledge,  and  ingenious  mnemonic 
devices,  for  children.  In  1874  he  began  to  issue  his  second  great  novel,  "  Anna 
Karenina,"  completed  in  1878.  Soon  after  he  renounced  his  artistic  career, 
and  with  but  few  exceptions  devoted  himself  to  the  publication  of  religious  and 
ethical  books  and  pamphlets,  and  to  work  on  his  estate  for  and  with  the 
peasants.  A  pathetic  incident  connected  with  Tolstoi's  abandonment  of  the 
literary  art  is  Turgencv's  dying  appeal  to  his  friend  that  he  should  return 
again  to  the  calling  which  nature  so  plainly  indicated  as  his  own.  When  it  is 
remembered  what  little  appreciation  Tolstoi  showed  of  Turgenev,  and  how  the 
latter  had  seen  him  fall  asleep  over  the  manuscript  of  his  best  novel,  "  Fathers 
and  Sons,"  this  circumstance  assumes  magnified  importance,  both  as  illus- 
trating the  large-hearted  disinterestedness  of  Turgenev  and  the  extraordinary 
value  he  attached  to  Tolstoi's  literary  creations. 

"  My  dear,  dear  Leo  Nikolaevich,"  wrote  Turgenev,  "  I  have  not  written 
you  for  so  long,  because  I  was  and  am  still  lying,  to  put  it  briefly,  on  my 
death-bed.  I  can  not  recover.  But  I  write  you  to  let  you  know  how  glad  I 
am  of  being  your  contemporary,  and  able  to  place  this,  my  last  and  sincere 
request,  before  you.  My  friend,  return  to  your  literary  labors.  Does  not  your 
talent  come  from  the  same  source  whence  all  things  come?  How  happy  I 
should  be  if  I  could  know  that  my  prayer  had  been  granted !  My  friend, 
great  writer  of  the  Russian  soil,  grant  my  prayer !  " 

In  spite  of  this  fervent  plea  Tolstoi  but  rarely  returned  to  his  old  art. 
Besides  his  simple  popular  tales  issued  in  1880,  he  published  "  The  Death  of 
Ivan  Ilich"  (1885);  the  dramas,  "The  Power  of  Darkness"  (1887),  "The 
Fruits  of  Culture"  and  "The  First  Brewer;"  "  Kreutzer  Sonata"  (1888); 
"Master  and  Workman"  (1895);  "Resurrection"  (i8go)  and  "Who  Is 
Right?"  (1901).  To  his  ethical,  religious,  and  philosophical  writings  belong 
"My  Confessions"  (1889");  "What  I  Believe"  (1892);  "What  Is  Happi- 
ness" (1882);  "What  Shall  We  Do  Then?"  (1884-5);  "The  Kingdom  of 
God  is  Within  You  "  (1893)  ;  "  Politics  and  Religion  "  (1894)  ;  "  Christianity 
and  Patriotism"  (1895);  "Letters  to  a  Pole"  (1896);  "War  and  Peace" 
(1896);  "What  is  Art?"  (1898);  "The  Slavery  of  Our  Times"  ''1900); 
"  My  Reply  to  the  Holy  Synod  "  (1901)  ;  and  "  The  Czar  and  His  Ministers  " 
(1901). 

Tolstoi  still  continues  active  with  the  pen  and  ready  to  serve  the  poQr  and 
the  "oppressed  with  all  the  means  at  hi;^  ^pmmanH-  In  1892,  on  hearing  of  the 
destitution  of  the  peasants  in  the  famine  districts,  he  left  all  his  literary  labors, 
which  at  that  time  greatly  absorbed  his  attention,  and  started  a  vigorous  cam- 
paign of  relief,  going  to  the  famine  district  him.self,  and  enlisting  in  the  same 
service,  his  two  daughters  and  three  sons.  He  established  tea  stands,  soup 
booths,  and  corn  and  clothing  stores.     He  was  constantly  on  his  feet  from 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  49 

morning  till  night,  in  the  severest  cold,  hail,  rain  or  snow,  going  from  house 
to  honsc  and  gathering  information  about  the  needs  of  each  family  or  indi- 
vidual. In  addition,  he  found  time  to  publish  newspaper  articles  and  pamphlets 
concerning  the  condition  of  the  famine-stricken  districts. 

It  was  to  assist  the  emigration  to  Canada  of  the  Dukhoborchi,  a  religious 
sect  whose  beliefs  largely  conform  to  the  principles  of  Tolstoi,  that  he  wrote 
the  novel  "  Resurrection,"  the  proceeds  of  which  were  to  go  entirely  in  their 
aid,  and  his  manly  letter  protesting  against  the  conduct  of  the  government 
during  the  recent  internal  troubles,  is  still  fresh  in  the  memory'of  every  news- 
paper reader. 

From  his  youth,  Tolstoi  has  been  accustomed  to  vigorous,  physical  exer- 
cise. He  was  as  much  at  home  in  the  chase  and  on  the  ice-field  as  in  the 
fashionable  ball-room.  Although  now  seventy-three  years  of  age,  he  still  per- 
forms manual  labor  and  is  a  skilful  cyclist. 

TOLSTOI,  THE   MAN. 

It  is  a  truism  to  say  that  the  works  of  art,  even  of  genius,  suffer  in  pro- 
portion as  they  are  not  self-intelligible  and  require  biographic  or  other  ex- 
ternal elucidation.  It  is  this  which  obscures  so  much  in  the  works  of  Goethe 
and  narrows  his  popularity.  Tolstoi  is  entirely  free  from  such  a  fault,  as  are 
indeed  all  the  best  Russian  authors,  and  yet  it  is  a  familiar  fact  that  the  wide- 
spread fame  of  Tolstoi,  the  author,  is,  to  no  small  extent,  due  to  the  fame  of  the 
man.  It  was  indeed  a  strange  and  unique  spectacle  which  this  count,  the 
creator  of  "  War  and  Peace  "  and  "  Anna  Karenina,"  offered  to  the  world. 
Hailed  as  the  greatest  author  of  Russia,  gladly  welcomed  as  a  distinguished 
guest  in  all  the  circles  of  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow  society,  he  suddenly 
turned  his  back  on  the  splendors  and  pleasures  which  he  had  hitherto  enjoyed 
and  settled  on  his  estate  of  lasnaia  Poliana  to  live  and  work  as  a  peasant 
among  the  peasants. 

This  change,  which  to  the  general  onlooker  must  have  appeared  sudden 
and  abrupt,  was  nevertheless  but  the  practical  expression  of  a  stage  of  in- 
tellectual development  which  commenced  with  Tolstoi's  youth  and  has  never 
since  this  turning-point  in  his  life  quite  cared  to  undergo  modifications. 
Tolstoi  early  displayed  a  meditative  and  even  brooding  disposition.  He 
was  always  skeptical  of  authority,  and  original  in  his  views.  At  an  age 
when  the  ordinary  j^outh,  scarcely  in  the  exuberance  of  his  own  life 
so  much  as  realizes  the  existence  of  death,  Tolstoi's  mind  was  mor- 
bidly exercised  with  reflections  on  this  subject,  and  after  witnessing  the 
death  of  his  brother,  the  thought  of  the  ending  of  life  seems  never  to  have 
left  him.  It  forms  the  theme  of  two  of  his  shorter  works,  and  is  circum- 
stantially described  in  "  Anna  Karenina,"  and  in  other  novels.  Later,  his 
speculations  on  death  assume  that  mystic  and  metaphysical  quality  which  is 
characteristic  of  so  much  of  Tolstoi's  constructive  philosophy.  Death  is  but 
"birth  to  a  new  life,"  and  a  life  full  of  blissful  promise,  it  would  appear; 


n 


50  TOLSTOI: 

for  in  his  latest  pamphlet,  "  Mj'  Reply  to  the  Holy  Synod,"  Tolstoi  writes: 
■■  Eternal  life  and  retribution  I  recognize  to  such  a  degree,  that  at  my  ago, 
standing  as  I  do  on  the  verge  of  the  grave,  I  must  often  make  efforts  to  refrain 
from  desirmg  bodily  death."  This  statement  is  not  a  little  remarkable  follow- 
ing immediately  on  the  declaration  of  his  disbelief  in  a  life  beyond  the  grave, 
and  excluding,  as  he  does  in  general,  every  element  of  the  supernatural  from 
the  Christianity  which  he  calls  his  religion. 

From  these  meditations  on  death,  Tolstoi  was  naturally  led  on  to  the 
inquiry  into  the  meaning  of  life  itself.  Since  man's  span  is  limited,  how  make 
best  use  of  what  time  there  is?  It  was  needful  to  work  out  a  theory  of  life 
to  solve  this  problem,  and  the  result  of  his  searching  obtains  its  first  direct  ex- 
pression in  "  My  Confessions"  (1889),  the  appearance  of  which  may  be  con- 
veniently taken  to  mark  the  formal  severance  between  the  old  and  the  new 
Tolstoi. 

Tolstoi  could  never  be  completely  reconciled  to  the  life  of  pleasure  to 
which  he  had  for  a  time  yielded.  Even  when  most  violently  borne  on  the 
tide  of  his  passions,  and  when  he  seemed  completely  and  helplessly  under  their 
control,  that  second  element  in  his  dual  nature,  always  strong  in  Tolstoi,  the 
element  which  revealed  to  him  the  hollowness  and  emptiness  of  his  existence — 
in  a  word,  the  spiritual  clement,  was  never  entirely  subdued.  In  "  Notes  of  a 
Marker  "  he  depicts  the  gradual  downward  progress  of  Nekhludov,  who  had 
become  addicted  to  gambling,  and  who,  in  a  moment  of  self-recognition,  on 
realizing  the  abasement  into  which  he  had  sunk,  ends  his  life  by  sending  a  bullet 
through  his  head.  This  Nekhludov  is  an  autobiographic  character.  It  was 
not  for  years  to  come  that  he  was  able  completely  to  extricate  himself  from 
the  habits  of  overindulgence  to  which  he  had  become  a  victim  in  conse- 
quence of  the  surroundings  determined  by  his  class  position. 

With  this  new  freedom,  however,  the  solution  as  to  the  best  mode  of 
life  became  only  the  more  urgent.  He  had  already  begun  to  be  beset  by 
doubts  as  to  the  usefulness  of  his-  work  as  an  author.  Even  as  he  was  writing 
his  finest  works,  "  War  and  Peace  "  and  "  Anna  Karenina,"  he  would  some- 
times pause  in  the  midst  of  his  work  and  ask  himself:  '"And  w-hy  are  you 
doing  all  this?  And  what,  on  the  whole,  is  the  meaning  of  your  life?  "  Joy 
in  mere  creative  work  had  ceased  to  satisfy  him,  had  ceased  to  be  a  cause 
sufficient  in  itself.  Fame  and  riches  had  lost  their  meaning.  He  was  groping 
in  the  dark,  and  was  in  despair.  The  wherefore  of  life,  and  how  to  live  it 
worthily — these  questions  came  more  and  more  frequently  and  more  and  more 
compellingly,  until  at  last  they  would  no  longer  leave  him. 

Nevertheless,  he  was  in  possession  of  perfect  health.  "  Physically,"  he 
writes  in  his  "  Confessions,"  "  I  could  vie  with  the  peasant  at  hay-making. 
Mentally,  I  could  work  eighteen  hours  without  feeling  any  harmful  conse- 
quences. And  with  all  this,  I  had  come  to  such  a  pass  that  I  was  unable  to 
live,  and  that,  in  the  fear  of  death,  I  had  to  resort  to  cunning  against  myself 
that  I  might  not  connnit  suicide." 


A    CRll'lCAL   STUDY.  51 

At  that  time  Tolstoi  happened  to  spend  a  winter  in  Moscow  and  under- 
took to  study  the  problem  of  poverty  as  manifested  in  the  conditions  of  the 
poor  of  that  city.  A  census  was  about  to  be  taken,  and  he  procured  the  super- 
vision of  the  poor's  quarter.  With  the  aid  of  a  number  of  students  he  went 
from  house  to  house  and  had  ample  opportunity  to  make  observations,  and 
thi-  indigence,  the  want  and  destitution  he  encountered  surpassed  all  his  ex- 
pectations. As  usual  in  the  case  of  Tolstoi,  contact  with  the  actual  fact  pro- 
duced a  tremendous  impression.  Here,  then,  was  something  real  to  be  done, 
the  utility  of  which  could  not  be  doubted.  The  poverty  of  the  city  must  be 
eradicated,  and  with  an  enthusiasm  and  a  naive  characteristic  utopianism, 
Tolstoi  set  about  the  consummation  of  this  object.  He  called  together  meet- 
ings of  rich  friends  and  organized  a  subscription  fund.  But  the  friends  re- 
mained lukewarm  and  the  subscribed  sums  were  not  forthcoming.  Incredulous 
smiles  greeted  his  pleadings.  He  was  told  that  his  efforts  were  futile,  that  it 
was  his  kind  heart  that  prompted  him  to  enter  into  such  a  work,  but  that  poor 
people  there  always  had  been  and  always  will  be. 

At  first  he  met  these  remarks  with  impatience  and  even  with  tears.  Soon, 
however,  he  came  to  recognize  his  mistake.  The  cause  of  the  misery  of  the 
masses  lay  far  deeper  than  he  had  expected.  It  had  its  origin  in  the  existent 
economic  and  social  order  of  things,  and  any  such  superficial  measure  as  pro- 
posed by  him,  even  if  successful,  could  only  serve  as  an  inefficient  and  tem- 
porary relief.  It  required  a  thorough,  radical  reorganization  of  society  to 
remove  the  cause  of  the  evil.  What  enabled  one  group  of  people  to  live  in 
riches  and  superabundance,  brought  about  the  misery  and  want  of  all  the  rest. 
Idleness  in  the  one  case  meant  overwork  in  the  other. 

Tolstoi  did  not  shrink  from  the  inevitable  conclusions  of  this  recognition. 
He  had  long  ago  regarded  himself  as  useless ;  he  now  found  that  he  was  a 
parasite.  But  did  this  parasitism  at  least  bring  happiness  to  those  who  lived  by 
it?  No.  On  the  contrary,  it  engendered  skepticism,  disgust  of  life,  despair  and 
suicide.  On  the  other  hand,  the  peasant,  who  earned  his  bread  by  his  own 
toil,  did  not  weary  of  life.  His  joys  were  few,  but  he  was  able  to  live,  while 
Tolstoi,  the  count,  was  not.  Nor  was  the  peasant  tormented  with  questions  as 
to  the  meaning  of  existence.  Life  and  death  were  accepted  as  coming  from 
God,  and  with  the  peasant  this  was  no  mere  phrase.  It  was  a  reality.  God 
pervaded  their  whole  life,  and  death  was  but  the  last  stage  of  life. 

In  all  their  actions  the  consciousness  of  God  is  constantly  present  in  the 
peasants'  mind,  and  their  simple  duties  proceed  from  God.  Of  these  the  first 
is  love  and  helpfulness,  the  second  work.  To  the  peasant  it  is  impossible  to 
doubt  the  necessity  of  work.  Hence,  in  order  to  attain  to  a  recognition  of 
God.  the  two  main  requisites  are  work  and  a  spirit  of  helpfulness.  Tolstoi, 
in  adopting  the  life  of  the  peasant,  found  in  it  not  only  the  liberation  from 
parasitism  but  the  ultimate  solution  of  the  entire  problem  of  life.  In  working 
for  one's  own  needs  and  in  being  helpful  to  others,  he  discerned  the  justifica- 
tion of  his  existence.     Such  a  life,  if  become  universal,  would,  he  thought, 


53  TOLSTOI: 

bring  about  Ihc  siibsdliilion  of  a  world  of  good  for  the  present  order  of  force 
and  oppression. 

Personal  Appearance. 

The  impression  of  his  face  is  unique.  A  powerfully  arching  forehead 
with  numerous  wrinkles  grouped  in  parallel  lines  around  a  middle  deeper 
furrow.  The  eyebrows  are  thick  and  overhanging.  In  the  sockets  underneath 
are  set  two  little,  wise,  sharp  eyes,  whose  look  seems  to  issue  from  the  inmost 
depth  and  to  penetrate  into  the  very  being  of  the  person  on  whom  it  chances 
to  rest.  The  nose  is  wide,  almost  flat,  with  thick  nostrils.  From  these  two 
heavy  wrinkles  run  down  in  the  direction  of  the  mouth,  whose  undcrlip  recalls 
the  past  life  of  sensual  enjoyment  of  which  he  had  so  copiously  tasted.  While 
the  hair  on  his  head  has  gradually  thinned,  receding  further  and  further  from 
his  forehead,  but  hiding  part  of  his  large  and  ugly  ears,  the  mouth,  cheeks 
and  chin  are  covered  completely  with  a  long  gray  beard  descending  over  the 
chest.  No  one  will  find  this  face  harmonious  or  handsome  in  the  usual  sense ; 
it  has  even  at  first  sight  something  frightening  and  uncanny.  It  is  only  on 
closer  observation  that  one  recognizes  in  his  features  the  balanced  equilibrium 
between  intelligence  and  will,  power  and  knowledge  which  lend  immediate  ex- 
pression to  the  personality.  Usually  the  count  appears  in  the  country  in  a 
simple  linen  blouse  held  together  by  a  narrow  leather  strap.  Into  this  he 
thrusts  one  of  his  powerful  hands,  especially  when  looking  at  something,  or 
engaged  in  leisure  conversation.  These  hands  show  not  only  familiarity  with 
the  pen,  but  a  capacity  to  grapple  with  whatever  the  practical  demands  of 
life  enforce.  For  small  clothes  he  wears  trunk-host,  and  the  feet  are  covered 
with  a  pair  of  those  large,  heavy,  but  well-made  shoes,  to  the  possession  of 
which  even  the  poor  man  of  Russia  attaches  great  value.  The  head  is  covered 
with  a  linen  cap,  like  those  worn  by  peasants. 

Method   of   Work. 

To  this  day  Tolstoi  exhibits  a  vast  amount  of  interest  with  regard  to  all 
literary  questions.  As  soon  as  he  hears  of  some  characteristic  event  he  traces 
its  causes  and  examines  its  possible  availability  for  a  story.  To  become  the 
subject  of  Tolstoi's  elaboration,  however,  the  theme  must  fulfil  many  qualifica- 
tions. In  the  first  place,  the  subject  must  be  new  and  intrinsically  valuable. 
Secondly,  it  must  touch  a  form  of  life  with  which  Tolstoi  is  thoroughly  famil- 
iar, for  the  count  does  not  like  to  write  from  hearsay.  Finally,  and  most 
important  of  all,  the  subject  must  take  possession  of  Tolstoi,  as  a  sick  man  is 
caught  by  a  fever,  or  a  man  of  sound  health  by  a  coughing-fit.  Only  then  can 
Tolstoi  turn  to  his  work  with  a  real  artistic  fervor.  Almost  all  his  works  un- 
dergo numerous  revisions.  In  the  first  place,  a  bare  sketch  of  the  work  is  pre- 
pared without  any  regard  to  detail.  A  clean  copy  of  this  is  then  made  for  Tol- 
stoi, and  being  placed  on  his  desk,  it  is  subjected  by  him  to  a  re-elaboration. 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY. 


53 


SPECIMEN    OF    TOLSTOI'S    MANUSCRIPT. 


£'iti°M~ 


54  TOLSTOI: 

But  this,  too,  is  still  only  a  draft.  Soon  the  manuscript  teems  with  erasures, 
changes,  insertions  and  references  to  the  other  side  of  the  page.  Then  a 
second  clean  copy  is  prepared  and  undergoes  the  same  process.  The  same  fate 
is  shared  by  the  third.  Some  chapters  are  rewritten  by  Tolstoi  in  this  manner 
more  than  ten  times.  At  the  same  time,  he  gives  but  scant  attention  to 
stylistic  improvements,  and  has  indeed  a  contempt  for  everything  polished, 
linishod  and  elaborate  in  art.  It  serves  only,  he  says,  to  stifle  the  thought 
and  injures  the  effect.  He  labors  under  an  intense  strain  on  each  single 
chapter,  permitting  himself  but  slight  intervals  of  relaxation,  during  which 
he  keeps  patiently  to  his  bed.  But  few  chapters  come  out  successful,  so  to  say, 
at  the  first  throw,  as  for  instance  the  race  scene  in  "  Anna  Karenina,"  which 
he  wrote  under  the  influence  of  an  account  of  Prince  Obolenski.  When  finally 
the  work  has  attained  its  desired  form,  Tolstoi  would  read  it  first  to  a  circle  of 
friends,  whose  remarks  he  would  utilize.  That  the  impression  on  the  hearers 
does  not  always  answer  the  expectations  of  the  count,  is  best  illustrated  by 
the  following  incident : 

After  completing  "  The  Power  of  Darkness,"  Tolstoi  read  the  drama  to 
several  peasants  to  try  its  effect.  What  was  the  consequence?  At  the  most 
thrilling  passages,  which  Tolstoi  could  not  recite  without  tears,  a  number  of 
his  hearers  suddenly  broke  out  into  loud  laughter,  and  thereby  cooled  the  au- 
thor's ardor  considerably.  The  same  thoroughgoing  care  which  he  bestows  on 
his  manuscripts,  he  also  applies  to  the  proof-sheets,  and  very  often  transforms 
these  into  new  manuscripts.  It  may  be  asserted  without  exaggeration  that 
after  Tolstoi  had  examined  ninety-nine  proofs  of  his  works,  he  would  still 
find  something  to  change  in  the  hundredth.  The  feeling  of  self-criticism  is  in 
general  highly  developed  in  our  author.  It  often  happens  that  the  very 
next  day  he  regrets  the  mistake  which  he  had  made  the  day  before. 

GENERAL   SURVEY. 

"  Tolstoi's  writings  and  life  have  meant  more  to  me  than  any  other  man's. 
It  seems  to  me  that  his  greatest  word  is  peace ;  and  in  this,  as  in  everything, 
he  appeals  to  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  reality  within  the  official  and  social 
simulacrum  which  hides  each  of  us  from  the  others. 

"  Tolstoi's  literature,  his  matchless  art,  his  fiction,  which  makes  all  other 
appear  so  fcel)le  and  false,  is  merely  the  flower  of  his  love  of  men,  his  desire 
to  be  true  to  them.  I  can  not  separate  his  ethics  from  his  esthetics,  for  he 
has  himself  known  no  difference  in  them.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  in  his 
fiction  he  works  more  instinctively  and  vitally,  and  I  believe  that  in  this  he 
will  work  longest.  As  a  teacher,  he  has  put  into  contemporaneous  terms  the 
wisdom  which  has  always  been  in  the  world  for  the  conduct  of  men ;  but  as 
an  artist,  he  has  divined  things  concerning  their  nature  and  character  in  mys- 
tical heights  and  de])ths  unreached  before,  and  has  portrayed  life  with  an 
unexampled  truth  and  fulness. 

"  One  perfect  life  and  one  unerring  doctrine  we  had  already,  and  it  is 
praise  enough  for  Tolstoi  to  say  that  he  teaches  these  with  all  his  heart  and 
all  his  mind;  and  however  he  falters  and  wanders,  he  worships  them  by  a 
constant  endeavor  for  their  goodness  and  beauty." — IV.  D.  Hozvclls. 

"  To  comprehend  Tolstoi,  the  devotee  is  to  remember  that  he  is  first  of 


J 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY. 


55 


SPECIMEN    OF   TOLSTOI'S   PROOF   CORRECTIONS. 


56  TOLSTOI: 

all  the  creative  writer,  ihe  artist,  the  poet.  His  dramatic  sense  still  affects  his 
life.  But  every  great  author  must  be  a  humanitarian.  As  a  Russian  symbolist 
of  the  primitive  Christianity,  Tolstoi  is  in  no  wise  a  fanatic.  There  is  a  stern 
rational  purpose  in  his  bearing.  He  is  a  man  on  the  ground,  with  arms  out- 
spread— a  living  cross — in  the  pathway  of  armies  and  emperors.  Tolstoi  is 
the  supreme  exemplar  of  an  ideal,  that  of  the  patient  and  unselfish  labor  that 
is  both  love  and  praj'er.  An  ideal  routs  the  force  of  conventions ;  a  single 
protagonist  inspires  a  host  of  men.  Tolstoi  is  the  chief  of  living  inspirers, 
and  not  for  Russia  alone.  The  children  of  his  soul  spring  up  in  other  lands. 
In  my  belief  the  most  sincere,  the  most  modest,  the  most  distinguished  of  our 
own  living  writers,  he  has  never  been  so  great  as  since  he  openly  consecrated 
his  humor,  his  imagination,  his  pathos  to  the  service  of  humanity.  If  he  is 
not  yet  fully  comprehended,  he  is  beloved^alrcady  on  our  hearts'  list  for 
canonization.    The  rest  will  fo!low\" — Edmund  Clarence  Stedman. 

"  Looking  on  Tolstoi  simply  as  a  writer,  and  appreciating  him  as  a 
reader,  there  is  one  book  which  stands  preeminent  as  a  masterpiece  of  fiction, 
'  Anna  Karenina.'  It  is  certainly  Shakespearian  in  its  matchless  portraiture, 
its  wide  range  of  human  character ;  and  it  appeals  to  us  even  more  than 
Shakespeare's  work.  Now  Tolstoi  in  his  converted  state  disavows  his  novels 
and  has  taken  up  the  idea  that  all  art  for  art's  sake  is  wrong;  in  his  first  years 
he  was  guilty  of  that  crime  of  writmg  purely  for  art's  sake." — Zangzvill. 

■'  I  desire  to  pay  my  tribute  to  the  extraordinary  quality  of  Tolstoi's 
works  of  fiction;  and  especially  of  those  novels  which,  like  '  Sevastopol,'  and 
■  War  and  Peace,'  lay  their  scenes  among  the  events  of  war.  To  anyone  who 
has  been  in  military  service,  these  books  differ  in  kind  from  all  other  novels 
bearing  on  the  same  theme.  All  other  military  pictures,  before  those  of  Tol- 
stoi, resembled  those  familiar  engravings  of  the  death  of  Nelson,  in  which 
that  hero  dies  on  the  quarterdeck,  in  the  midst  of  battle,  surrounded  by  weep- 
mg  officers,  each  one  of  whom  has  apparently  just  emerged  from  a  bandbox, 
in  exquisitely  fitting  garments,  in  time  to  strike  an  attitude  and  bid  his  admiral 
adieu.  The  waste,  the  uncertainty,  the  desultoriness  of  ordinary  war,  the  dirt, 
its  disease,  its  neglect,  its  absence  of  system  and  of  method — all  these  things  are 
familiar  to  those  who  have  read  of  them  in  the  v/ondrous  pages  of  Tolstoi." — 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson. 

"  Of  all  distinguished  men  that  I  have  ever  met,  Tolstoi  seems  to  me 
most  in  need  of  that  enlargement  of  view  and  healthful  modification  of  opin- 
ion which  come  from  observing  men,  and  comparing  opinions  in  different 
lands  and  under  different  conditions.  This  need  has  been  all  the  greater 
because  in  Russia  there  is  no  opportunity  to  discuss  really  important  questions. 
Among  the  whole  hundred  and  twenty  millions  of  people  there  is  no  public 
body  in  which  the  discussion  of  large  public  questions  is  allowed ;  the  press 
affords  no  real  opportunity  for  discussion ;  indeed,  it  is  more  than  doubtful 
whether  such  discussions  would  be  allowed  to  any  effective  extent  in  cor- 
respondence or  at  one's  own  fireside.  Like  so  many  other  men  of  genius  in 
Russia,  then — and  Russia  is  fertile  in  such — he  has  had  little  opportunity  to 
take  part  in  any  real  discussion  of  leading  topics,  and  the  result  is  that  his 
opinions  have  been  developed  without  modification  by  any  rational  interchange 
of  thought  with  other  men.  Under  such  circumstances,  any  man,  no  matter 
how  noble  or  gifted,  having  given  birth  to  striking  ideas,  coddles  and  pets 
them  until  they  become  the  full-grown,  spoiled  children  of  his  brain.  He  can 
see  neither  spot  nor  blemish  in  them,  and  he  at  last  virtually  believes  himself 
infallible.  This  characteristic  I  found  in  several  other  Russians  of  marked 
ability.     Each  had  developed  his  theories  for  himself  until  he  had  become 


57 
A    CRITICAL   STUDY. 

a.ed  .i*  .hen,,  and  •^^i^/:;^^^^^^^'^^-'^^^ 
?0US  I'l  pM^ShS'pTc''^.-  b-n  developed  in  Russ,a.  -Dr. 
'^w  D.  White.  .  •     ,u^  -Rtissian  in  order  to  appreciate 

at  qualify  the  man  for  V'^„C  of "•>>>*="  ""'^  "™?'  "."''"  He  i  a 
.unnatural  and  out  of  P'^f^J^tlf^an  to  understand  the  two.  H=  '^.f^ 
''„^,ttre=°U''is"en":;e,y"al\onis..c  to  the  condt    n^^^ 

^Sfoi  slr:S  LTs  suTroSn.. --  .  a  state  of  unrest.  - 

™Kor;cou>d  possih.  '^r^f^-ttS^'^^^fi^^^ 
earnestness  and  .ncerrty  of    h^e  ™-^,^^„„  ■    ^,  K'^ols^fo Uo  da'y 

.l^fhas  euUoie  frem  his  novels.    I.  .s  a  nus.ak  ^  ^y  of  ,he  man  one 

nest  H.  Crosby. 

-r  ;.tr,;'c  Philosophy  and  htntcs. 
Criticisms  on  Tolstois  1  nuosop>y  thought 

..  A  genius  of  rare  order     In  the  Hues  of  h.s_relg.ous^and  so^l        | 

■  Lve!  ^-rnsSrSrSion  ri  n-  f^rto'rs-ro:,"';  sSf.e^Sg^ 
.  -I     „  tv,pcp  lines  IS  one  oi  tne  great  lo.^  relisious   and  etnicai 

Z''^  ^\°"lffer  from  h  m  m  many  particulars  «  J^is  rehgio  ^^^  ^.^^^ 

a'ciLi   I'fm^rorundly  impressed  by  the  fact  tha^^^^^^^^         ^     ^^^      j 

e  was  talking  about  and  mearitwn^^^^^^ 

ur  Gradgrmd  mmds.  -R.  ^'^'\.  ^^^  ^han  the  law  of  chanty,  fra- 

.' Tolstoi  knows  no  better  or  higher  ,^wtn.^^^  ^g^g 

ernity   and  forgiveness  taught  by  Chnst. 

Criticisms  on  "War  and  Peace.  ^  ^  .  ,  ^c 

.A  .onderiul  work,  but  it-veakest  .  ie^nd  .;at  .s^w^^^^^^^^^ 

to  life,  description,  the  «^,Vit^i:y  P^j^/ 

Tolstoi  we  do  not  possess.  "J  "^^"'"^';.    ,   „5^^ ,     ^he  first  two  volumes  are 
"What  a  painter  and  what  a  P^y^^'^j^^^^'^ieats  himself  when  he  philoso- 

sublim'^but /e  thi;^,|f^ifhelj:;San''thrauthor  and  the  Russian-while 

phizes.    At  the  end  you  see  tne  g 


58  TOLSTOI: 

up  to  that  time  you  had  seen  only  nature  and  humanity.     It  is  strong,  very 
strong." — Flaubert. 

"  We  see  neither  classic  villains,  nor  classic  heroes,  we  see  only  human 
souls,  subjected  to  temporary  passions  and  conditions,  but  in  the  main  guided 
by  pure  and  noble  aspirations." — Strazow. 

"  Anna  Karcnina." 

"  '  Anna  Karenina '  does  not  please  me,  though  there  are  truly  beautiful 
passages  in  it — the  races,  the  mowing,  the  hunt — but  it  all  tastes  sour,  and 
smells  of  Moscow,  incense,  old  maids.  Slavophilism,  Junkcrthum." — 
Tnrguenicf. 

"  '  Anna  Karenina  '■ — one  of  the  most  thrilling  novels  of  our  time,  making 
light  of  all  romantic  literature  and  trying  to  find  the  elements  of  a  purely 
Christian  art." — The  Nation,  1898. 

"Memories:   Childlwod,  BoyJwod,   Youtli." 

"  Tolstoi's  characters  are  astonishingly  real.  We  get  to  know  them  as 
intimately  as  persons  that  we  have  known  in  the  flesh,  sometimes  more  in- 
timately. But  in  .spite  of  and  along  with  this  intimacy,  English  readers  can 
not  help  feeling  all  the  while  that  they  are  brought  into  contact  with  strange 
and  unfamiliar  natures,  whose  thoughts  and  impulses  and  actions  are  not  as 
ours,  and  yet  are  irresistibly  true  to  life.  This  sense  of  novelty  and  back- 
ground of  strangeness  is  not  without  its  charm,  for  the  element  of  surprise  is 
essential  to  recreation. 

''The  personages  engaged  are,  in  the  main,  the  same  throughout — 
ihe  father,  the  eider  brother,  and  sister,  remaining  more  or  less  prominent  all 
along.  In  particular  the  picture  of  his  nurse,  Natalie  Savichna,  will  go 
straight  home  to  the  hearts  of  all  who  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  learn 
by  personal  experience  of  what  absolute  unselfishness  and  unfaltering  devo- 
tion old  servants  are  capable.  Degraded,  as  a  girl,  from  the  rank  of  a  house- 
maid to  that  of  a  farm -servant  for  wishing  to  marry  a  fellow-domestic,  and 
restored  on  resignmg  her  desire,  we  find  her  regarding  the  gift  of  enfranchise- 
ment as  a  sentence  of  exile,  and  devoting  the  remainder  of  her  life  to  the 
service  of  her  young  mistress.  Her  simple,  affectionate  ways,  endless  industry, 
and  homely,  unfeigned  grief  for  the  death  of  Nicola's  mother,  are  illustrated 
m  the  most  touching  way  imaginable.  The  account  of  her  own  last  days  is 
profoundly  touching. 

"  Of  his  mother,  the  picture,  though  faint,  is  lifelike,  and  the  references 
to  her  always  marked  by  a  rare  affection  and  reverence.  Another  admirable 
sketch  is  his  German  tutor,  a  lonely  old  man,  sensitive,  easily  appeased,  with 
comical  methods  of  self-assertion,  and  a  disinterested  affection  not  wholly 
exempt  from  the  desire  of  obtaining  material  quid  pro  quo.  His  father, 
too,  is  painted  in  vivid  relief, — chivalrous,  susceptible,  and  emotional;  an 
inveterate  gambler;  always  needing  an  audience  for  the  performance  of  a 
good  action  ;  enviable  on  account  of  the  perfect  skill  he  showed  in  hiding  from 
others  as  well  as  from  himself  the  unpleasant  side  of  life;  and  so  constantly 
at  the  mercy  of  his  impulses  that  he  never  had  time  to  acquire  any  princi- 
ples; being  for  the  rest  quite  too  well  pleased  with  life  to  see  the  necessity  of 
them. 

"  Nicholas  (Tolstoi  himself)  is  very  far  from  being  an  ideal  character, 
but  rather  one  strangely  compounded  of  good  and  evil,  of  ignoble  curiosity, 
and  chivalrous  impulses,  sensitive  and  confident  by  turns.  All  these  shifting 
traits  are  delightfully  illustrated  in  the  episode  of  his  grandmother's  birthday- 
party,  where  he  loses  his  heart,  child  fashion,  to  the  liltlc  Sonia. 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  59 

"  The  second  and  third  divisions  of  the  book  are  even  more  absorbingly 
interesting.  They  supply  the  most  convincing  proof  of  the  proposition  that 
freedom  is  never  denied  to  genius  in  the  treatment  of  difficult  and  delicate 
problems." — The  Spectator,  1889. 

Crimean  and  Caucasian  Stories. 

"  Tolstoi  does  not  see  in  war  events  of  collective  masses  in  which  the 
individual  disappears,  some  grand  effects  with  the  sound  of  trumpets  and  the 
waving  of  banners ;  but  however  well  he  understands  to  bring  into  prominence 
the  main  points  of  an  engagement  he  never  forgets  that  it  is  the  individual 
men  who  do  the  deeds  and  suffer  the  sufferings  of  war.  These  men  he  knows 
not  only  as  soldiers  or  as  material  for  war,  he  knows  them  in  their  home 
occupations  as  peasants  and  citizens,  and  the  officers  according  to  their  social 
position  in  peace.  It  is  perhaps  the  first  case  in  which  the  prodigious  action  of 
war  is  painted  altogether  as  a  human  experience.  There  is  no  dyeing  in  fine 
colors,  no  exaggeration,  it  is  the  actual  experience  which  he  relates.  And  among 
the  large  number  of  individuals  that  pass  under  his  observation  he  by  no  means 
gives  preference  to  the  officers.  From  the  boys  who  enter  the  army  as  ensigns 
and  in  whom  intoxicating  dreams  and  reality  are  still  mingled  confusedly  to- 
gether, down  to  the  gray  old  man  on  whom  the  fate  of  a  family  depends,  from 
the  harmless  amusements  at  night  on  the  watch  down  to  murderous  onslaughts 
— nothing  is  lacking.  Nor  is  the  environment  forgotten — the  city  with  its  in- 
habitants. It  is  the  life,  the  whole  of  life,  composed  of  the  aggregate  mass 
of  active  men,  in  a  state  of  war.  With  great  astonishment  the  author  remarks 
how  the  usual  interests,  conversations,  class  distinctions,  etc.,  by  no  means 
cea.se,  and  scarcely  step  in  the  background  before  the  irruption  of  the  unusual. 
Glancing  over  the  whole,  we  see  a  picture  of  limitless  wealth  of  features,  of 
telling  honesty  and  convincing  truth.  Every  chapter  confirms  the  author's 
declaration,  that  truth  alone  was  his  hero.  And  this  hero  he  loves  as  only  a 
poet  can  love  his  heroes." — Lowenfcld. 

"  The  Cossacks." 

In  this  common  everyday  story  Tolstoi  has  evolved  a  real  human  destiny. 
During  his  long  journey  to  the  Caucasus,  Olenin  is  still  filled  with  arbitrary 
fancies,  like  young  men  who  have  not  yet  been  seized  by  the  reality  of  life, 
and  who  live  more  in  their  imaginings  than  in  the  actuality  of  things.  Suddenly 
he  steps  into  the  realm  of  reality,  so  powerful,  so  unlike  anything  he  had 
known  before.  The  everlasting  snow-peaks  heave  in  sight  before  him.  and 
from  his  every  thought  ring  out  the  words,  '  But  the  mountains  !  Ah  !  the 
mountains!'  And  they  form  a  world  mightier  than  our  soul,  they  suffer  no 
life,  no  feeling  within  their  kingdom  that  does  not  accord  with  them.  But 
the  most  wonderful  thing  of  all  he  is  yet  to  learn.  This  large,  living,  within- 
itself-reposing  world  has  also  a  soul,  yes,  a  human  soul.  Nature  here  is  also 
man.  The  Cossacks  living  here  are,  as  it  were,  the  conscience  and  soul  of 
nature.  Here  are  no  arbitrary  fancies,  no  disordered,  confused  jumble  of 
passions  and  feelings  peculiar  to  the  young  man  of  culture.  All  is  well 
defined,  all  determined  by  the  exact  demands  which  nature  imposes  through 
the  changes  of  seasons.  Here  is  no  questioning,  no  doubt,  no  indistinct,  half- 
stolen  emotion,  not  even  with  regard  to  women.  All  is  simple  fact  and  as 
naturally  self-understood  as  nature  itself." — Lozuenfeld. 

"  Finest  and  most  perfect  product  of  Russian  literature." — Turguenief. 

"A  Morning  in  the  Life  of  a  Landed  Proprietor." 

"  When  we  read  the  little  story  we  ask  ourselves  whether  the  peasant 
has   in  any  literature  been  characterized  more  completely  and  vividly   than 


60  TOLSTOI: 

here  by  Tolstoi?  Everything  is  told  with  such  life  and  originality,  and  at 
the  same  time  in  stich  a  simple,  self-understood  and  unpretentious  manner. 
Not  a  superfluous  word  and  no  forced  compression  disturb  the  reader.  Every 
sentence  is  the  exhaustive  expression  of  that  which  should  be  said,  and  fra- 
grant with  nature,  warmth  and  reality." — E.  Zabel. 

"  Polikushka." 

"  This  novel  is  terrible,  but  not  hideous,  dramatic  in  the  extreme,  but 
without  any  trace  of  striving  after  eff^ect,  characteristically  true  down  to  the 
smallest  details,  and  in  spile  of  its  brevity  so  rich  in  substance  that  the  reader 
gains  the  impression  of  having  read  a  large  novel,  for  the  fate  of  Polikushka 
is  closely  interwoven  with  the  portraiture  of  the  broad  life  of  the  peasants." — 
E.  Zabel. 

"  Resurrection." 

"  '  Resurrection  '  is  not  a  novel  in  the  accepted  meaning  of  the  word,  in 
the  sense  in  which  '  Anna  Karenina '  is  a  novel.  It  is  a  formless,  realistic 
narration,  used  to  convey  a  scathing  denunciation  of  social,  political  and 
official  conditions  in  Russia.  Nothing  escapes :  The  prison  management,  the 
judiciary,  the  jury  system,  the  civil  service,  the  army,  the  state  church,  and 
above  all,  the  horrors  of  the  convoys  of  convicts  to  Siberia.  In  all  this  Tolstoi 
traces  the  corruption  and  oppression  of  the  system  to  the  shortcomings  of 
the  individuals  directing  it.  But  for  the  individual,  he  says,  the  system  could 
not  exist :  those  who  have  power  and  abuse  it  are  individually  responsible, 
each  and  every  one  of  them  for  the  misery  of  the  poor,  whose  indigence, 
ignorance  and  darkness  are  the  substratum  upon  which  the  whole  corrupt 
superstructure  rests,  ever  pressing  it  down  deeper  into  the  slough.  The  title 
does  not  refer  only  to  the  two  imaginary  characters  in  the  book — the  well- 
born man  and  the  low-born  girl  whom  he  starts  on  the  broad  path.  .  .  . 
Tolstoi  preaches  resurrection  for  every  servant  of  the  Russian  state — accord- 
ing to  his  picture,  a  mob  of  corrupt,  self-seeking,  loose-living,  hard-drinking, 
well-mannered  '  men  of  the  world,'  and  he  holds  every  Russian  of  the  better 
classes  morally  dead.  Russia  must  be  born  again.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
is  all  the  guidance  humanity  needs." — The  Book  Buyer. 

^ ._^  "  What  is  Art?" 

"  Tolstoi  is  more  essentially  a  man  of  genius  than  any  writer  now  living. 
He  has  carried  the  methods  of  the  novel  further  into  the  soul  of  man  than 
any  novelist  that  ever  lived ;  and  he  has  at  the  same  time  rendered  the  com- 
mon details  of  life  with  a  more  absolute  illusion  of  reality  than  anyone  else. 
Since  he  has  given  up  writing  novels,  he  has  written  a  study  of  the  Christian 
religion  which  seems  to  me,  from  the  strictly  Christian  point  of  view,  to 
leave  nothing  more  to  be  said ;  and  he  has  followed  out  his  own  conclusions  in 
life  with  the  same  logic  as  that  with  which  he  has  carried  them  out  in 
writing.  He  is  unique  in  our  time  in  having  made  every  practical  sacrifice 
to  his  own  ideal.  Everything  he  writes,  therefore,  we  arc  bound  to  receve 
with  that  respect  which  is  due  alike  to  every  man  of  genius  and  to  every  man 
of  unflinchmg  sincerity." — Arthur  Symons  in  Saturday  Review,  1898. 

"  Tolstoi  classifies  all  his  own  fictions  under  the  head  of  bad  art.  Tol- 
stoi believes  in  art;  and  not  only  does  he  admit  that  humanity  can  not  act  on 
without  it,  but  he  believes  art  to  be  one  of  our  most  efficacious  means  for 
securing  the  highest  ends!  It  is  not  the  suppression  of  art  that  Tolstoi  desires, 
"but  Its  reform. 


A    CRITICAL   STUDY.  61 

"  This  book  is  the  result  of  profoiiiul  reflection,  it  illustrates  both  the 
vigor  of  the  author's  mind  and  his  power  of  keen  satire,  and  that  one  feels  in 
its  every  page  a  warm  glow  of  religious  emotion,  dominated  by  the  ideal  of 
universal  brotherhood.  Less  than  all  this  would  suffice  to  secure  a  wide 
celebrity  throughout  the  lettered  world  for  Tolstoi's  ideas  on  art.  What 
strikes  us  first  is  the  flood  of  light  which  Tolstoi  sheds  on  all  that  is  factitious 
and  violently  artificial  in  the  art  of  to-day, — of  the  theater,  of  books.  Instead 
of  exalting  art  above  measure,  or  of  relegating  it  to  some  exceptional  sphere, 
he  merely  considers  it  as  one  form  of  human  activity,  having  intimate  rela- 
tions with  all  the  rest.  Art  is  a  method  of  communication  between  men,  a 
means  of  bringing  them  together. 

"  To  recall  an  emotion  which  we  have  ourselves  experienced  and  then 
communicate  it  to  others  through  the  medium  of  gestures,  lines,  colors, 
sounds,  or  verbal  characters,  such  is  the  proper  object  of  art.  Art  is  one  form 
of  human  activity,  and  consists  in  the  conscious  and  voluntary  conveyance  of 
one  man's  sentiments  to  another  by  means  of  external  signs.  Art  is  a  device 
for  unifying  men  through  the  experience  of  common  feelings;  and  as  such 
it  is  indispensable  to  the  life  of  humanity;  and  its  progress  in  the  path  of  hap- 
piness. Art,  in  short,  is  language  differing  from  verbal  speech,  in  this  respect, 
that  speech  transmits  the  thoughts  of  man;  art,  his  emotions  and  sentiments. 
Tolstoi  maintains  that  art  ought  never  to  be  followed  as  a  business  or  pro- 
fession. 

"  The  book  has  many  grave  defects." — Rene  Dominic  in  Living  Age,  1898. 

"  The  work  is  a  model  of  lucidity,  often  brilliantly  epigrammatic,  although 
disfigured  by  exaggerations,  by  repetitions,  by  errors  of  fact,  and  by  glaring 
omissions  such  as  the  name  of  Ruskin  among  esthetic  writers,  and  Watts 
among  painters." — Literature,  1898. 

"  A  book  of  great  importance  and  value.  A  direct  appeal  to  the  con- 
science and  intelligence  of  the  cultivated  classes,  summoning  them  to  consider 
whether  for  the  larger  part  of  that  which  they  applaud  as  art  is  art  at  all  in 
the  true  sense,  and  whether  its  effect  on  themselves  and  on  the  world  at  large 
is  not  injurious  rather  than  beneficial." — Popular  Science  Monthly,  1898. 

"  All  the  best  elements  of  Tolstoi's  nature  appear  in  this  book,  which  in 
style  and  interest,  is  to  be  compared  with  the  best  works  of  Ruskin." — 
Bibliotheca  Sacra,   1898. 

"  What  Tolstoi  objects  to  most  strenuously  is  the  assumption  of  writers 
on  art  that  there  is  a  close  and  vital  connection  between  art  and  beauty,  and 
that  the  object  of  art  is  to  gratify  the  esthetic  ntt As. "—Victor  Yarros  in 
The  Dial,  1898. 

"  After  reviewing  briefly  the  principal  existing  theories  and  finding  little 
comfort  in  them,  he  proceeds  to  define  art  as  an  activity  by  which  one  man 
hands  on  to  others  feelings  he  has  lived  through.  It  is  primarily  a  medium 
for  emotion,  as  language  is  a  medium  for  thought.  The  task  for  art  to 
accomplish  is  to  make  that  feeling  of  brotherhood  and  love  of  one's  neighbor, 
now  attained  only  by  the  best  members  of  society,  the  customary  feeling  and 
the  instinct  of  all  men.  And  in  order  that  art  shall  foster  this  union  of  all 
men,  it  must  appeal  to  all  men,  and  therefore  essentially  to  the  natural 
psychology  of  the  peasant,  who  thus  becomes  our  criterion.  The  literature, 
music  and  pictures  which  the  peasant  can  not  comprehend  are  not  art;  and 
even  that  art  which  merely  unites  sections  of  humanity  while  differentiating 
them  from  other  sections  is  base  and  false — namely,  patriotic  art  and  music, 
and  art  that  is  worked  into  different  religions,  for  these  divide  the  human 
family  against  itself."— T/i^  Outlook    (English),   1898. 


02  TOISTOI:    A     CRITICAL    STUDY. 

"  As  to  Tolstoi's  art,  we  should  not  be  so  interested  in  his  opinions  if  he 
had  not  the  power  of  putting  the  human  spirit  into  htmian  language  beyond 
the  power  of  any  man  now  writing." — R.  W.  Gilder. 

SUGGESTED  SELECTIONS. 

"  War  and  Peace." 

Invasion  of  Russia. 

At  Borodino. 

Burning  of  Moscow. 

Retreat  and  Destruction  of  the  French  Army. 

Battle  of  Austerlitz. 

Death  of  Andrei  Bolkonski. 

Battle  of  Schonegrahen. 

'"Anna  Karenina." 
Anna's  Illness. 
Anna  and  Her  Son. 
Anna  Commits  Suicide. 
The  Steeple  Chase. 

"  Resurrection.'' 

Description  of  Easter  Festival  in  the  Country. 
Revising  of  the  Judgment  by  the  Senate. 

Transportation  of  the  Prisoners  from  the  Central   Prison   in  Moscow  to 
the  Train. 

"Memories:  Chilhood,  Boyhood,  Youth." 
Picture  of  the  Nurse  Natalie  Savichna. 

"  A  Morning  in  the  Life  of  a  Landed  Proprietor." 
Nekhludov's   Reflections   in  the   Early   Morning. 


66 


Teacher, 


Vm  So  Tired:' 


To  relieve  the  little  ones'  weariness, 

the  wise  teacher  will  use  the  charming        ^    ^    ^    ^ 

Schcxjiroom  Games,  Minute  Plays, 
Action  Songs,  Action  Poems, 

Marchings,  or  Exercises  found  in 

Graded  Physical  Exercises 

By    BERTHA    LOUISE   COLBURN. 


^  complete  iip-to-date  system  of  Physical  Culture,  specially  adapted 
for  use  m  schools;  arranged  and  graded  for  eight  years'  work. 

illustrated  by  over  One  Hundred  and  Fifty  Positions  and  Poses. 

The  exercises  are  arranged  in  eight  groups,  one  for  each  year  in 
rraded  schools.  Each  group  consists  of  ten  lessons,  one  for  every  four 
veeks.  There  are  also  lessons  in  Marching;  Games;  Action  Sono-s- 
\ction  Poems;  also  Illustrated  Minute  Plays.  "   ' 


This  system  of  exercises  has  been  tested  for  years  in 
New  York  and  Massachusetts  Schools. 


ust  issued.     Sample   pages  sent   free    on  request.     Correspondence 

solicited  with  School  Boards.    Superintendents, 

Principals,   and  Teachers. 


RRICE,     $1.00,     NEZX,     ROSTRAID 

Address  the  Publishers, 

:DGAR  S.  WERNER  PUBLISHING  &  SUPPLY  CO.  (Incorporated), 
43  EAST  1 9th  STREET,  NEW  YORK. 


WERNER'S  MAGAZINE. 

A  Monthly  Journal  of  Entertainment  for  Home,  School,  Platform,   and 

Stage,  <with  ^radical  Hints  for  the  Development  of  the 

Expressional  Po'xoer  of  Body  and  Voice, 


REGULAR      REIATUREIS  : 

I.  Dramatic  Stories,  especially  written  or  adapted  for  oral  reading. 

2  Pantomimes,  copiously  illustrated  by  reproductions  of  photographs  from 
life.  Illustrations  prepared  with  the  greatest  attention  to  pose,  drapery,  photo- 
graphing, photo  engraving,  and  printing. 

3.  Elaborate  and  Analytical  Studies  of  Artists,  Composers,  Authors,  and 
Dramatists. 

4.  Plays,  Scenes,  Drills  Tableau.x,  Statue-Poses,  or  other  entertainments 
suitable  for  platform  use,  amateur  theatricals,  or  for  school  and  college  use. 

5.  Material  or  suggestions  suitable  for  anniversaries,  birthdays,  .special 
days  declamations,  orations,  etc.,  for  school  entertainments,  exercises  and 
e.Khibitions 

6.  Plays,  Drills,  Pantomimes,  Action  Songs,  Action  Poems,  and  Dialogues 
suitable  for  children  at  home  or  at  school. 

7.  Material  or  suggestions  for  Charades,  Tableaux,  Games,  Indoor  and 
Outdoor  Festivals,  Dinners,  Birthdays,  Anniversaries,  and  other  social  and 
home  occasions. 

8.  Monologues,  cuttings  from  or  condensations  of  Novels  and  Plays, 
Poems,  Prose  Pieces;  specially  adapted  for  public  reading.  (At  least  ten  such 
selections  in  every  number  of  the  magazine.) 

9.  Lessons  in  Elocution,  either  in  speech  technique  or  on  the  rendering 
of  selections. 

10.  Lessons  in  Singing,  cither  in  vocal  technique  or  on  the  rendering 
of  songs. 

II.  Lessons  in  Public  Speaking  ,  in  debate,  on  the  stump,  in  clubs,  on  the 
rostrum,  in  the  pulpit  and  at  the  bar). 

12.  Lessons  m  Gymnastics,  P'encing,  Dancing,  etc. 

13.  Lessons  in  Pantomime,  Make-up,  Statue-Posing,  Tableaux,  etc. 

14.  Illustrations  from  scenes  of  plays  on  the  boards  in  New  York,  with 
analysis  of  pictures  (tableaux),  and  comment  on  technique  of  acting. 

15.  Hints  for  the  Cure  of  Stuttering,  Stammering,  and  other  vocal  defects. 

16.  Hints  on  Dress  and  Costume  for  Artists. 


Werner's  Magazine,  $2.00  a  Year,  Invariably  in  Advance. 


Addrkss  thk  Prni.isiiKKs  ; 

EDGAR  S.  WERNER  PUBLISHING  AND  SUPPLY  CO.  (incorporated) 

43  St  45  East  Nineteenth  Street,  H^ixx  York. 


A  Text -Book  that 
meets  the  requirements 
of  Twentieth  Century 
Elocution  is  J*  .^^  t3*  J* 


Elocution 

and 

Action. 


By    F.    TOWNSEND    SOUTHWICK. 

)sed  b\J  /Vlan\J  of  the  I^eading  Schools  of  English^ 
Speaking  America. 


7eII  printed  and  bound,  75  cents  net.    For  class  use,  60  cents,  postpaid. 


Teachers  of  Reading  and  Elocution, 

Don't   handicap  yourselves  any   longer 
with   out-of-date   text-books.      We  will 
allow   you   a  liberal   price  for  them  in 
.  exchange  for 

"Elocution  and  Action." 


Begin  the  school  year  aright  by  adopting 
the  best  and  most  modern  elocutionary 
text-book. 


Address  the  Publishers, 

Ecgar  S.   Werner   Publishing  &   Supply  Co. 

(iNCOnPORATEo), 

43  EAST  I9th  STREET,  NEW  YORK. 

Hedquarters    for    Supplies    of   all    kinds  for  Teaching  Reading:,   Elocution,  Declamation,  the 

Delsarte  System,  Physical  Culture,  Vocal  Culture,  and  whatever  else  pertains  to 

Expression  as  a  Fine  Art.    Write  us  for  information. 


.W^wJ-^...»         • 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Aiigcli's 
This  book  is  DL'E  on  tlic  last  date  stainptd  below. 


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EDGAR     S.     WERNER 
PUBLISHING    &     SUPPLY    CO 

'  INCORPORATED!  ' 

43  &.  45    EAST19TH   STREET. 
NEW    YORK 


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